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C/3 


THE  GREEK  THEATER 
AND  ITS  DRAMA 


ROY  C.  FLICKINGER,  Ph.D. 

Professor  of  Greek  and  Latin 
Northivestern   Uni'versiry 


ht'^ 


47808 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  PRESS 
CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS 


COPYMCHT  1918  AND  I922  By 

The  Untveesity  of  Chicago 


All  Rights  Reserved 


Published  May  1918 
Second  edition  November  1922 


Conposed  and  Printed  By 

The  University  of  Chicago  Press 

ChicasrOi  Illinois,  U.S.A. 


lit 


MATRI  CARAE 
PIETATIS  CAUSA 


Red 


;-"8  8JJ. 


Greek,  Sir,  is  like  lace;  every  man  gets  as 
much  of  it  as  he  can. — Dr.  Samuel  Johnson 


PREFACE 

Prior  to  the  outbreak  of  the  world-war  in  Europe  it  seemed 
that  America  was  about  to  pass  through  a  period  of  great  popular 
interest  in  the  drama.  With  the  return  of  normal  activities 
consequent  upon  the  coming  of  peace  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  this 
interest  may  be  revived  and  may  continue  to  grow.  So  far  as 
such  interest  is  hysterical  or  manifested  by  attempts  at  play- 
writing  on  the  part  of  those  without  training,  experience,  or 
natural  aptitude  it  has  little  to  commend  it.  On  the  other 
hand,  nothing  can  be  more  wholesome  than  a  widespread  com- 
prehension of  the  origin,  history,  and  basic  principles  of  tragedy 
and  comedy.  Thus,  we  are  deeply  indebted  to  the  successive 
scholars  who  have  undertaken  to  analyze  EHzabethan  drama  and 
assign  to  Seneca,  the  Latin  comedians,  Aristotle,  the  Greek 
playwrights,  and  the  various  mediaeval  elements  their  respective 
shares  of  influence.  But,  as  the  ultimate  source  of  all  other 
dramatic  art,  the  Greeks'  contribution,  whether  in  precept  or 
example,  must  ever  occupy  a  unique  position.  Accordingly,  no 
effort,  however  humble,  to  make  the  theater  and  drama  of  the 
Greeks  more  widely  known  ought  to  require  an  apology. 

In  the  following  pages  I  have  tried  to  do  three  things : 

First,  to  elaborate  the  theory  that  the  peculiarities  and  con- 
ventions of  the  Greek  drama  are  largely  explicable  by  its  environ- 
ment, in  the  broadest  sense  of  that  term.  Some  aspects  of  this 
fundamental  proposition  have  already  been  developed  by  others. 
But,  so  far  as  results  have  been  sought  in  the  field  of  classical 
drama,  it  has  been  done  less  comprehensively  than  is  here 
attempted;  and  the  earlier  work  has  been,  for  the  most  part, 
antiquated  by  the  momentous  accession  of  new  information 
during  the  last  twenty-five  years. 

Secondly,  to  emphasize  the  technical  aspect  of  ancient  drama. 
Technique  has  largely  escaped  the  attention  even  of  our  play- 
wrights, some  of  whom  attempt  to  produce  plays  that  will  have 


X  PREFACE 

none.  Most  of  our  classical  scholars,  also,  study  and  teach  and 
edit  the  ancient  dramatists  as  if  they,  too,  had  been  equally 
slipshod.  Our  handbooks  on  scenic  antiquities  and  the  classical 
drama  have  been  written  from  the  same  point  of  view.  Of  late 
years  the  Germans  have  awakened  to  the  real  situation,  and 
many  of  their  recent  monographs  deal  with  various  phases  of 
the  subject.  Nevertheless,  so  lately  as  191 1  a  German  dis- 
sertation began  with  these  words : 

As  yet  not  very  many  investigations  into  the  technique  of  the  Greek 
tragedians  are  available.  In  addition  to  the  incidental  hints  that  are 
scattered  here  and  there,  especially  in  the  commentaries,  two  works  in  this 
field  are  above  all  to  be  mentioned  and  they  are  both  very  recent :  Adolf 
Gross,  Die  Stichomythie  in  der  griechischen  Tragodie  und  Komodie  (1905), 
and  Friedrich  Leo,  Der  Monolog  im  Drama  (1908).^ 

In  what  terms,  then,  ought  the  indifference,  not  to  say  the 
unawareness,  of  American  scholars  with  regard  to  these  matters 
to  be  characterized  ?  It  is  true  that  quite  recently  the  German 
pubhcations  have  caused  some  attention  to  be  devoted,  in  this 
country,  to  the  dramaturgy  of  the , classical  playwrights;  but 
as  yet  such  researches  have  gained  only  scant  recognition  from 
the  generality  of  classical  students. 

Thirdly,  to  elucidate  and  freshen  ancient  practice  by  modern 
and  mediaeval  parallels.  This  is  an  old  and  deeply  worked  mine, 
and  I  am  under  heavy  obligations  to  my  predecessors;  but  the 
vein  is  inexhaustible,  and  I  have  striven  to  keep  the  point  in 
mind  more  steadfastly  than  is  sometimes  the  case.  It  is  of  a 
piece  with  this  to  add  that  I  have  endeavored  to  treat  the  ancient 
plays  as  if  they  were  not  dead  and  inert,  belonging  to  a  world 
apart,  but  as  if  their  authors  were  men  as  real  as  Ibsen  or  Gals- 
worthy, who  had  real  problems  and  met  them  in  a  real  way. 
The  desirability  of  this  point  of  view  surely  ought  not  to  be  a 
matter  of  question;  yet  in  fact  it  is  exemplified  with  surprising 
rareness.  To  many,  Sophocles  and  Euripides  seem  to  possess 
scarcely  more  historicity  than  the  heroes  of  Greek  mythology. 

'  Cf.  Hermann  Deckinger,  Die  Darstelhmg  der  persdnlichen  Motive  bet  Aiscjtylos 
titid  Sophokles  (191 1),  p.  i. 


PREFACE  xi 

To  a  varying  degree  all  these  aims  run  afoul  of  a  historic 
controversy  among  dramatic  critics.  In  the  Poetics  Aristotle 
recognized  the  distinction  between  studying  tragedy  "by  itself" 
and  in  reference  also  to  the  audience  (or  theater).^  He  included 
''spectacle"  (oi/'ts)  or  "the  equipment  of  the  spectacle"  (6  rrjs 
6\peo)s  Koa-fxos)  among  the  six  parts  which  every  tragedy  must 
have,  but  proceeded  to  declare  that  "this,  though  emotionally 
attractive,  is  least  artistic  of  the  parts  and  has  least  to  do  with 
the  art  of  poetry,  since  the  power  of  tragedy  exists  even  apart 
from  a  public  performance  and  actors  and  since,  furthermore,  it 
is  the  art  of  the  costumer  (or  stage  machinist)  rather  than  that 
of  the  poet  to  secure  spectacular  effects."  He  granted  that 
"fear  and  pity  may  be  excited  by  the  spectacle,  but  they  may 
be  excited  also  by  the  inner  structure  of  the  play,  which  is  the 
preferable  method  and  is  typical  of  a  better  poet,"  etc.  "The 
power  of  a  tragedy,"  he  thought,  "may  be  made  manifest  by 
merely  reading  it."  Finally,  he  pointed  out  that  music  and 
spectacle  are  just  the  accessories  in  which  tragedy  surpasses  epic 
poetry  and  that  they  constitute  no  inconsiderable  addition  to 
its  effect  by  rendering  its  pleasures  most  vivid.  These  citations 
suffice  to  show  Aristotle's  attitude,  which  was  consistently 
maintained:  he  believed  the  spectacle  to  be  one  of  the  indis- 
pensable elements  of  drama,  but  that  it  ought  also  to  be  a 
comparatively  subordinate  element.  This  was  an  eminently 
sane  position  to  take,  and  it  would  have  been  well  if  his  suc- 
cessors had  been  equally  judicious. 

Dr.  Spingarn  has  tried  to  break  down  the  force  of  Aristotle's 
recognition  of  spectacular  effects  by  saying  that  he  could  not 
"help  thinking  of  plays  in  connection  with  their  theatrical 
representation,  any  more  than  most  of  us  can  think  of  men  and 
women  without  clothes.  They  belong  together  by  long  habit 
and  use;  they  help  each  other  to  be  what  we  commonly  think 
them.     But  he   does   not   make   them  identical   or   mutually 

'  Cf.  Aristotle  Poetics  144908.  The  other  passages  cited  in  this  para- 
graph are  ibid.  1449633  and  1450010,  1450617-21,  145361-3,  1462012,  and 
1462014-17. 


xii  PREFACE 

inclusive."^  In  other  words,  Aristotle  had  no  acquaintance  with 
the  "closet-drama,"  and  so  did  not  take  it  into  account.  But 
there  is  an  allowance  to  be  made  also  on  the  other  side.  There 
is  some  doubt  as  to  just  what  Aristotle  meant  by  "spectacle," 
whether  merely  "the  visible  appearance  of  the  actors  when  got 
up  in  character  by  the  costumier"  or  "scenery,  dresses — the 
whole  visible  apparatus  of  the  theater."  Even  if  he  had  the 
larger  meaning  in  mind  he  could  not  have  realized  its  full 
significance.  He  knew  but  a  single  type  of  theatrical  building, 
which  must  therefore  have  seemed  to  him  as  integral  a  part  of 
dramatic  performances  as  the  Greek  climate.  He  could  not 
look  down  the  ages  and  contrast  the  simple  arrangements  of  the 
Greek  theater  with  the  varying  lighting  effects  and  scenic 
splendor  of  modern  and  intervening  types.  He  could  not  avoid, 
then,  underestimating  the  importance  of  this  factor.  Further- 
more, when  he  states  that  of  the  six  parts  the  spectacle  has  least 
to  do  with  the  art  of  poetry  and  is  more  closely  related  to  the  art 
of  the  costumer  than  to  that  of  the  poet,  he  means  what  he  says 
and  no  more.  As  its  title  indicates,  his  treatise  was  concerned 
with  the  art  of  poetry,  not  with  that  of  dramaturgy.  Hence  he 
stressed  the  factors  that  dealt  with  the  essence  of  tragedy  rather 
than  those  which  influenced  only  its  accidental  features  and 
external  form.  Even  so,  he  conceded  to  the  latter  elements  no 
negligible  value.  Considered  from  the  dramaturgical  standpoint 
as  well,  he  must  have  allowed  them  a  much  greater  importance. 
As  it  happens,  Spingarn  confines  his  examination  of  Aristotle's 
views  to  the  Poetics,  but  in  the  Rhetoric  occurs  the  interesting 
observation  that  "on  the  stage  the  actors  are  at  present  of  more 
importance  than  the  poets. "^  Aristotle  did  not  state  that  this 
was  the  proper  relationship,  but  as  a  practical  man  he  simply 
recognized  the  facts  before  his  eyes.  And  these  words  utterly  re- 
pudiate Spingarn's  attempt  to  subvert  the  obvious  impHcation 
of  Aristotle's  statements  in  the  Poetics. 

'  Cf .  his  paper  entitled  "Dramatic  Criticism  and  the  Theatre"  in  Creative 
Criticism,  p.  56  (1917). 

'  a.  Aristotle  Rhetoric  1403633  (Jebb's  translation).  This  statement  needs 
to  be  interpreted  in  the  light  of  pp.  190  f.,  below. 


PREFACE  XIH 

I  have  given  so  much  space  to  Aristotle's  opinions  because 
Spingarn  did.  But,  after  all,  it  does  not  greatly  matter.  Times 
have  changed  since  Roger  Bacon  placed  the  crown  of  infallibiUty 
on  the  Stagirite's  brow  with  the  words:  "Aristotle  hath  the  same 
authority  in  philosophy  that  the  apostle  Paul  hath  in  divinity." 
The  investigation  of  such  questions  no  longer  begins  and  ends 
with  "the  master  of  those  that  know." 

Nevertheless  I  conceive  Aristotle's  position  in  the  present 
matter  to  have  been  a  sensible  one,  though  it  has  oftentimes  been 
sadly  disregarded  and  even  flouted.  One  school  has  ignored  the 
spectacle  as  a  factor  in  dramatic  criticism.  The  other  school  has 
exalted  it  to  the  chief  place.  In  my  opinion  both  attitudes  are 
erroneous.  The  former  party  is  the  older  and  more  numerous. 
I  fancy  that  most  adherents  of  this  view  err  unconsciously.  It 
is  particularly  easy  in  dealing  with  the  dramatic  remains  of 
bygone  ages  to  ignore  or  minimize  the  effect  which  the  manner  of 
presentation  must  have  exercised  and  practically  to  confine  one's 
attention  to  literary  criticism  in  the  narrowest  sense  of  the  term. 
To  this  tendency  classical  scholars  have  been  peculiarly  prone. 
But  there  are  many  others  who  are  quite  aware  of  the  full 
meaning  of  the  position  they  occupy.  One  of  these  is  Spingarn, 
who  roundly  declares:  "A  play  is  a  creative  work  of  the  imagina- 
tion, and  must  be  considered  as  such  always,  and  as  such  only.'^^ 

The  opposing  view  seems  to  have  been  promulgated  first  by 
Castelvetro  (1570)  and  enjoyed  no  particular  popularity  until  re- 
cently. It  was  adopted  by  the  Abbe  d'Aubignac  in  the  seven- 
teenth century,  by  Diderot  in  the  eighteenth  century,  by  A.  W. 
Schlegel  during  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  by 
Francisque  Sarcey  during  the  latter  half.  There  is  no  space  here 
to  trace  the  developments  of  the  doctrine;  for  that  the  interested 
reader  may  consult  Spingarn's  article.  But  the  general  position 
of  the  school  is  as  follows:  "A  play  is  a  story  (a)  devised  to  be 
presented  (b)  by  actors  (c)  on  a  stage  (d)  before  an  audience."^ 

'  Cf.  op.  ciL,  p.  56.     The  italics  are  mine. 

*  Cf .  Clayton  Hamilton,  The  Theory  of  the  Theatre  (1910),  p.  3;  and  J.  B. 
Matthews,  North  American  Review,  CLXXXVII  (1908),  213  f.:  "They  believe 
that  the  playhouse  has  now,  has  had  in  the  past,  and  must  always  have  a  monopoly 


xiv  PREFACE 

These  are  not  merely  important  elements  or  essential  elements; 
they  are  the  prime  elements.  They  outweigh  all  other  considera- 
tions. It  was  Diderot's  central  idea  that  the  essential  part  of  a 
play  was  not  created  by  the  poet  at  all,  but  by  the  actor.  The 
"closet-drama"  they  hold  up  to  scorn  as  a  contradiction  in 
terms.  The  "psychology  of  the  crowd,"  long  before  that  name 
for  it  had  been  invented,  was  an  integral  part  of  this  teaching. 
The  inadequacy  of  this  point  of  view  is  aptly  expressed  in 
Goethe's  words  concerning  Schlegel :  "His  criticism  is  completely 
one-sided,  because  in  all  theatrical  pieces  he  merely  regards  the 
skeleton  of  the  plot  and  arrangement,  and  only  points  out  small 
points  of  resemblance  to  great  predecessors,  without  troubling 
himself  in  the  least  as  to  what  the  author  brings  forward  of 
graceful  life  and  the  culture  of  a  high  soul."^ 

To  me  neither  of  these  theories  is  satisfactory.  I  conceive 
the  truth  to  lie  between  them.  Etymologically  the  word 
"drama"  means  "action,"  and  the  practice  of  the  Greek  theater 
for  centuries  shows  that  an  action  carried  on  by  living  imper- 
sonators is  involved.  Action  narrated  on  a  printed  page  is  not 
enough.  I  am  willing  to  concede  that  by  a  natural  extension  of 
meaning  a  piece  which  was  confessedly  written  for  the  closet  and 
which  does  not  and  cannot  succeed  upon  the  stage  may  never- 
theless deserve  to  be  called  a  "drama."  But  despite  its  poetic 
charm  and  other  merits  such  a  drama  qua  drama  is  indeed  a  vie 
manquee.  On  the  other  hand,  against  the  materialistic  school 
I  maintain  the  self-evident  proposition  that  it  is  possible  for  a 
play  to  observe  all  the  technical  rules  arising  from  the  conditions 
of  performance  in  a  theater  and  before  an  audience  and  yet  be 
so  lacking  in  poetry,  in  truth  to  Hfe,  in  inherent  worth,  as  to  be 


of  the  dramatic  form.  They  cannot  recognize  the  legitimacy  of  a  play  which  is 
not  intended  to  be  played.  They  know  that  the  great  dramatist  of  every  period 
when  the  drama  has  flourished  has  always  planned  his  plays  for  performance  in  the 
theater  of  his  own  time,  by  the  actors  of  his  own  time,  and  before  the  spectators 
of  his  own  time";  and  The  Independent,  LXVIII  (1910),  187:  "In  other  words, 
the  literary  quality  is  something  that  may  be  added  to  a  drama,  but  which  is  not 
essential  to  its  value  as  a  play  in  the  theater  itself." 

'Cf.  Conversalions  with  Eckermann,  March  28,  1827  (Oxenford's  translation). 


PREFACE  XV 

undeserving  of  the  name  of  "drama."  It  is  evident,  then,  that 
craftsmanship  must  be  the  medium  of  the  playwright,  not  his 
sole  possession.  But,  in  truth,  the  issue  here  is  more  apparent 
than  real.  It  does  not  confront  us  in  practice.  Both  these 
extremes  constitute  a  negligible  fraction  of  our  dramatic  litera- 
ture. Students  of  the  drama  in  university  seminars,  dramatic 
reviewers  in  the  theaters,  and  playwrights  at  their  desks,  at 
least  those  who  aspire  to  an  enduring  fame,  alike  draw  upon  the 
same  body  of  plays  for  their  knowledge  of  dramatic  lore — upon 
Shakespeare,  Euripides,  Moliere,  Lessing,  Sophocles,  Ibsen, 
All  these  masters  had  a  close  and  practical  knowledge  of  the 
theater  for  which  they  wrote.  On  the  other  hand,  they  were 
infinitely  more  than  mere  technicians. 

But  Spingarn  would  maintain  that  the  aesthetic  value  of  a 
play  is  entirely  independent  of  theatrical  conditions  or  the 
conventions  arising  therefrom.  "For  aesthetic  criticism  the 
theater  simply  does  not  exist"  (cf.  op.  cit.,  p.  89).  Surely,  if 
Sophocles  were  writing  plays  for  the  present-day  public  he 
would  find  it  necessary  to  dispense  with  the  choral  odes  which 
have  been  at  once  the  delight  and  the  despair  of  Greek  students 
from  his  generation  to  this.  Would  not  such  an  omission  and 
the  consequent  readjustments  affect  the  aesthetic  value  of  his 
tragedies  ?  Or  if  one  of  our  dramatists  could  be  set  down  in  a 
Greek  theater  of  some  twenty-four  hundred  years  ago,  which 
was  incapable  of  representing  an  interior  scene  and  had  never 
contained  a  box  set,  certainly  his  dramas  would  have  to  be 
turned  literally  inside  out  before  they  could  be  produced  at  all. 
Would  this  recasting  in  no  wise  affect  their  aesthetic  criticism  ? 
Spingarn  is  anxious  to  protect  Aristotle  from  the  imputation  of 
believing  that  plays  and  their  theatrical  representation  are 
"mutually  inclusive."  But  his  own  position  makes  them 
mutually  e:i;cluslve.  Both  theories  are  extreme  and  unwarranted. 
I  have  already  quoted  Splngarn's  conception  of  a  play.  In  my 
opinion,  Mr.  Galsworthy's  putting  of  the  matter  is  not  only 
broader,  but  far  preferable,  for  the  reason  that  it  duly  recognizes, 
as  Splngarn's  dictum  does  not,  the  facts  of  existence.     He  writes: 


xvi  PREFACE 

"  For  what  is  Art  but  the  perfected  expression  of  self  in  contact 
with  the  world  ?"^  While  this  definition  takes  full  cognizance 
of  aesthetic  and  spiritual  values,  it  yet  does  not  exclude  such 
unmentioned  but  implicit  factors  as  the  medium  of  expression 
chosen  by  the  artist,  the  circumstances  under  which  his  work  is 
created  and  is  to  be  exhibited,  the  past  history  and  inherited 
conventions  of  the  genre,  etc.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  apparent 
that  Galsworthy  would  not,  after  the  fashion  of  the  materialistic 
school,  elevate  these  indispensable,  though  subordinate,  matters 
to  the  exclusion  of  all  else. 

It  thus  appears  that  I  array  myself  neither  with  the  aesthetic 
nor  with  the  materialistic  school  of  critics,  but  occupy  middle 
ground.  Nevertheless,  my  book  is  devoted,  in  the  main,  to  a 
consideration  of  the  more  materiahstic  and  external  factors  in 
the  development  of  Greek  drama.  These  factors  are  different 
manifestations  of  Environment,  which  is  a  far  broader  term  than 
Aristotle's  Spectacle  (6\f/Ls) .  I  entertain  no  illusion  as  to  the  com- 
parative importance  of  environment  in  the  criticism  of  drama. 
It  is  distinctly  of  secondary  importance.  If  it  were  possible  to 
study  Greek  drama  from  but  one  point  of  view,  perhaps  this 
would  not  deserve  to  be  that  one.  But  since  no  such  restriction 
obtains,  it  is  my  contention  that  a  consideration  6i  these  factors, 
too,  is  not  merely  valuable,  but  essential  to  a  complete  survey 
of  the  field. 

It  will  now  be  seen  why  I  have  no  chapter  on  the  "Influence 
of  the  Poet."  He  can  hardly  be  considered  a  part  of  his  own 
environment.  But  there  were  also  other  reasons  for  the  omis- 
sion. Partly  it  was  because  every  chapter  shows  the  master- 
mind of  the  dramatist  adapting  himself  to  the  situation  therein 
outlined,  and  partly  because  an  adequate  treatment  of  this  topic 
would  involve  a  presentation  of  the  poets'  ideas  and  teaching — ^a 
subject  which  is  amply  discussed  in  other  treatises  and  which 
would  swell  this  volume  beyond  the  limits  at  my  disposal.  I 
am  aware  that  to  some  the  result  will  seem  to  give  the  uninitiated 
a  lopsided  view  of  the  Greek  drama.     For  example,  a  reviewer 

^  Cf.  The  Inn  of  Tranquillity  (1912),  p.  277. 


PREFACE  XVU 

of  Signor  Francesco  Guglielmino's  Arte  e  Artifizio  nel  Dramma 
Greco  (Catania,  19 12)  maintains  that  "for  the  reader  who  is  not 
technically  a  scholar"  such  a  study  of  dramatic  technique 
presents  "a  subtly  distorted  picture."^  To  this  criticism  my 
reply  would  be  that  the  standard  handbooks  are  guilty  of  much 
the  same  error  in  largely  ignoring  the  phase  of  the  subject  which 
is  here  presented.  But  however  that  may  be,  for  the  language 
and  style  or  for  the  political,  moral,  ethical,  and  religious  ideas  of 
ancient  playwrights,  I  must  recommend  such  invaluable  works 
as  Haigh's  Tragic  Drama  of  the  Greeks  (1896),  Decharme's 
Euripides  and  the  Spirit  of  His  Dramas,  Croiset's  Aristophanes 
and  the  Political  Parties  at  Athens,  Legrand's  The  New  Greek 
Comedy  (the  last  three  translated  by  Loeb,  1906, 1909,  and  19 17), 
Sheppard's  Greek  Tragedy  (19 11),  Murray's  Euripides  and  His 
Age  (1913),  etc.  I  must  add,  however,  that  to  a  certain  extent 
these  books  treat  also  of  the  matters  discussed  in  this  volume 
and  have  freely  been  consulted. 

In  this  connection  I  wish  to  comment  upon  another  objection. 
Several  of  my  articles  which  are  incorporated  in  the  present 
volume  antedate  Guglielmino's  work,  and  my  whole  book  was 
blocked  out  and  large  parts  of  it  were  written  before  his  Arte  e 
Artifizio  came  to  my  attention.  Nevertheless  my  plan  of  treat- 
ment bears  some  points  of  resemblance  to  his.  In  particular,  he 
employs  the  chauvinistic  passages  in  Greek  tragedy  to  show  the 
poets  striving  for  "immediate  effects,"  i.e.,  deliberately  exciting 
the  patriotic  sentiments  of  their  audiences.  It  will  be  observed 
that  I  go  a  step  farther  and  maintain  that  the  winning  of  the 
prize  was  the  ultimate  object,  to  which  the  other  motive  was 
contributory  (see  pp.  213  if.,  below).  I  believe  that  the  tag  at 
the  end  of  Euripides'  Iphigenia  among  the  Taurians,  Orestes,  and 
Phoenician  Maids  and  the  parallels  from  Greek  comedy  confirm 
my  interpretation.     But  the  reviewer  just  cited  declares  it 

unfair  to  the  draxnatist  and  his  art  to  forget  that  he  and  his  audience  were 

all  Athenians  together When  the  Athenian  dramatist,  sharing  the 

Athenian  pride  in  their  country's  history  or  legend,  makes  a  character 

'  Cf.  Classical  Philology,  tX  (1914),  96. 


xviii  PREFACE 

express  a  common  patriotic  emotion  or  belief,  we  cannot  properly  caU  that 
flattery  of  the  audience,  or  an  artifice  for  effect,  even  though  the  words 
were  sure  to  call  out  rapturous  applause.  The  bit  of  truth  in  such  a  view 
is  so  partial  as  to  be  false. 

But,  as  Professor  Murray  says  of  the  choral  ode  in  the  Medea, 
''They  are  not  at  all  the  conventional  glories  attributed  by  all 
patriots  to  their  respective  countries."^  Moreover,  these  pas- 
sages usually  rest  upon  no  popular  beUef,  for  the  simple  reason 
that  they  frequently  corresponded  neither  to  history  nor  to 
traditional  mythology,  but  dealt  with  incidents  that  had  been 
newly  invented  by  the  poet's  fancy  or  had  at  least  been  invested 
by  him  with  new  details  and  setting. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  European  conflagration  in  August, 
1914,  London  managers  hastened  to  bring  out  such  plays  as 
Drake,  Henry  V,  and  An  Englishman's  Home.  Was  this  merely 
the  prompting  of  genuinely  patriotic  fervor  on  their  part,  or  a 
misdirected  attempt  to  exploit  the  emotions  of  their  country- 
men ?  The  fact  that  this  class  of  plays  was  soon  withdraw^-  after 
it  became  apparent  that  the  public  heard  enough  about  tiie  war 
elsewhere  without  being  reminded  of  it  also  in  the  theaters  favors 
the  latter  explanation.  Now,  that  Aristophanes  frankly  angled 
for  the  suffrages  of  his  audiences  cannot  be  denied.  WTien, 
then,  we  remember  how  Euripides  began  to  write  for  the  stage 
when  he  was  only  eighteen,  how  he  had  to  wait  for  a  chorus  in  the 
great  contest  until  he  was  thirty  and  then  gained  only  the  last 
place,  how  his  first  victory  was  deferred  until  441  B.C.  when  he  was 
forty-four  years  of  age,  how  few  were  the  victories  that  he  won, 
how  he  courted  his  pubhc  by  seeking  out  unhackneyed  themes, 
by  inventing  sensational  episodes,  by  reverting  to  the  manner- 
isms of  Aeschylus,  by  introducing  sex  problems — when  we  remem- 
ber all  this,  can  it  be  doubted  that  his  chauvinistic  passages  were 
part  and  parcel  of  the  same  policy  and  were  deliberately  written 
with  the  same  motives  as  are  revealed  in  the  choice  of  plays  by 
Sir  Herbert  Tree  and  the  other  London  managers  of  today  ? 

But  perhaps  it  may  be  said  that  the  psychology  of  managers 
is  utterly  unlike  that  of  poets.     In  reply  it  would  be  possible 

'  Cf.  Euripides  and  His  Age  (1913),  p.  89.     See  p.  217,  below. 


PREFACE  xix 

and  sufficient  to  cite  the  not  infrequent  concessions  which 
Shakespeare  and  many  another  have  made  to  the  groundlings 
in  their  audiences,  but  I  prefer  to  quote  the  words  of  a  drama- 
tist who  has  declared  himself  on  the  subject  more  explicitly. 
Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones  has  recently  written : 

A  dramatist  is  often  reproached  for  producing  plays  that  are  obviously 
below  the  standard  of  his  aspirations,  and  obviously  below  the  level  of  his 
best  work.  This  assumes  that  the  dramatist  is,  like  the  novelist,  always 
free  to  do  his  best  work.  There  could  not  be  a  greater  mistake.  The  drama- 
tist is  limited  and  curbed  by  a  thousand  conditions  which  are  never  suspected 

by  the  public.    The  drama  will  always  remain  a  popular  art The 

dramatist  who  writes  plays  too  far  ahead,  or  too  far  away  from  the  taste 
and  habits  of  thought  of  the  general  body  of  playgoers,  finds  the  theatre 
empty,  his  manager  impoverished,  and  his  own  reputation  and  authority 
diminished  or  lost.  No  sympathy  should  be  given  to  dramatists,  however 
lofty  their  aims,  who  will  not  study  to  please  the  general  body  of  playgoers 

of  their  days The  question  to  be  asked  concerning  a  dramatist  is — 

"Does  he  desire  to  give  the  public  the  best  they  will  accept  from  him,  or 
does  he  give  them  the  readiest  filth  or  nonsense  that  most  quickly  pays  ?" 
He  cannot  always  even  give  the  pubhc  the  best  that  they  would  accept  from 
him.  In  sitting  down  to  write  a  play,  he  must  first  ask  himself,  "  Can  I  get 
a  manager  of  repute  to  produce  this,  and  in  such  a  way  and  at  such  a  theatre 
that  it  can  be  seen  to  advantage  ?  Can  I  get  some  leading  actor  or  actress 
to  play  this  part  for  the  benefit  of  the  play  as  a  whole  ?  Can  I  get  these 
other  individual  types  of  character  played  in  such  a  way  that  they  will 
appear  to  be  something  like  the  persons  I  have  in  my  mind  ?  "  These  and 
a  hundred  other  questions  the  dramatist  has  to  ask  himself  before  he  decides 
upon  the  play  he  will  write.  A  mistake  in  the  casting  of  a  secondary  char- 
acter may  ruin  a  play,  so  narrow  is  the  margin  of  success I  hope  I 

may  be  forgiven  for  intruding  this  personal  matter  by  way  of  excuse  and 
explanation.  In  no  case  do  I  blame  or  arraign  the  pubHc,  who,  in  the 
theatre,  will  always  remain  my  masters,  and  whose  grateful  and  willing 
servant  I  shall  always  remain.^ 

It  should  be  recognized  that  my  book  is  intended  for  two  very 
diverse  types  of  readers,  whose  demands  likewise  are  dissimilar: 

First,  for  a  general  reading  public  which  has  little  or  no 
acquaintance  with  the  Greek  and  Latin  classics  in  the  original 
but  has  a  deep  and  abiding  interest  in  the  drama  together  with 

'  Cf.  The  Theatre  of  Ideas  (1915),  pp.  9  £f.  (copyrighted  by  the  George  H.  Doran 
Company). 


XX  PREFACE 

a  desire  to  learn  more  of  the  prototypes  and  masterpieces  of  the 
genre.  This  situation  has  made  necessary  an  amplitude  of 
explanatory  matter  which,  I  fear,  will  at  times  prove  irksome 
to  my  professional  confreres.  On  the  other  hand,  I  have  felt 
that  intellectual  honesty  required  me  to  treat  the  topics  dis- 
cussed in  my  Introduction  and  to  meet  the  problems  there  raised 
at  some  length  and  without  evasions.  But  to  do  so  necessitated 
the  interpretation  of  Greek  texts  and  the  presentation  of  much 
jejune  material.  Perhaps,  therefore,  some  of  my  non-classical 
readers  will  prefer  to  omit  the  Introduction.  By  cross-references 
and  slight  repetitions  I  have  endeavored  to  make  the  rest  of  the 
book  intelhgible  without  it.  The  English  word  ''stage"  is  too 
convenient  to  be  avoided  in  discussing  theatrical  matters,  but 
those  who  omit  the  third  section  of  the  Introduction  are  to 
understand  that  its  use  in  my  text  does  not  mean  that  I  believe 
that  the  Greek  theater  of  the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries  B.C. 
had  a  raised  stage  for  the  exclusive  use  of  actors. 

Secondly,  although  much  that  I  have  written  is  necessarily 
well  known  to  classicists,  still,  since  I  have  striven  to  incorporate 
the  results  of  the  latest  investigations  and  have  arranged  under 
one  co-ordinating  principle  phenomena  which  are  usually 
regarded  as  unrelated,  and  since  I  have  combined  points  of 
interpretation  which  are  scattered  through  scores  of  books  and 
monographs,  I  venture  to  hope  that  my  discussion  will  not  be 
without  interest  even  for  specialists. 

Inasmuch  as  the  comedies  of  Plautus  and  Terence  are  but 
translations  and  adaptations  of  Greek  originals,  and  since 
Seneca's  tragedies  are  constructed  upon  the  Greek  model,  I 
have  not  hesitated  to  cite  these  Latin  plays  whenever  they 
seemed  to  afford  better  illustrations  than  purely  Greek  pro- 
ductions. 

I  must  express  my  constant  indebtedness  to  such  invaluable 
storehouses  of  data  as  Miiller's  Lehrhuch  der  griechischen  Buhnen- 
aUerthilmer  (1886)  and  Das  attische  Buhnenwesen  (1902),  Na- 
varre's Dionysos  (1895),  and  especially  Haigh's  The  Attic  Theatre, 


PREFACE  xxi 

third  edition  by  Pickard-Cambridge  (1907);  also  to  Butcher's 
Aristotle's  Theory  of  Poetry  and  Fine  Art,  fourth  edition  with 
corrections  (1911),  and  Bywater's  edition  of  Aristotle's  Poetics 
(1909). 

I  desire  to  thank  the  editors  for  permission,  graciously 
granted,  to  use  material  which  I  have  already  published  in 
Classical  Philology,  V  (1910),  VII  (1912),  and  VIII  (1913),  the 
Classical  Weekly,  III  (1910),  VIII  (1915),  X  (1917),  and  XI 
(19 1 8),  and  the  Classical  Journal,  VII  (191 1)  and  X  (1914). 
Needless  to  state,  these  papers  have  not  been  brought  over  into 
the  present  volume  verbatim,  but  have  been  curtailed,  expanded, 
revised,  and  rearranged  according  to  need.  Furthermore,  fully 
two-thirds  of  the  book  are  entirely  new. 

Permission  to  quote  from  Mr.  A.  S.  Way's  translation  of 
Euripides  in  the  'Xoeb  Classical  Library,"  Dr.  B.  B.  Rogers' 
translation  of  Aristophanes,  and  Professor  J.  S.  Blackie's  trans- 
lation of  Aeschylus  in  "Everyman's  Library"  has  been  cour- 
teously granted  by  William  Heinemann,  London  (G.  P.  Putnam's 
Sons,  New  York),  G.  Bell  &  Sons,  and  J.  M.  Dent  &  Sons, 
respectively. 

To  my  friends.  Professor  D.  M.  Robinson  of  Johns  Hopkins 
University  and  Dr.  A.  S.  Cooley  of  Bethlehem,  Pa.,  I  am  indebted 
for  having  placed  at  my  disposal  their  collections  of  photographs 
of  Greek  theaters.  My  colleague.  Professor  M.  R.  Hammer  of 
the  Northwestern  University  College  of  Engineering,  has  put 
me  under  deep  obligation  by  supervising  the  preparation  of 
several  of  the  drawings. 

In  conclusion,  my  heartiest  thanks  are  due  to  Professor 
Edward  Capps,  who  first  introduced  me  to  the  study  of  scenic 
antiquities.  Several  parts  of  this  book,  when  originally  pub- 
lished as  articles,  have  enjoyed  the  benefit  of  his  invaluable 
suggestions  and  criticisms.  It  is  unnecessary  to  add,  however, 
that  he  must  not  be  held  responsible  for  any  part  of  them  in  their 
present  form. 

Roy  C.  Flickinger 

EvANSTON,  III. 


/ 


CONTENTS 

FAGK 

List  of  Illustrations xxv 

Introduction i 

.^.y^/^The  Origin  of  Tragedy i 

The  Origin  of  Comedy 35 

^;:^' The  Greek  Theater '-57 

CHAPTER  t, 

J    I.  The  Influence  OF  Religious  Origin       .     .    '■ 119  ^<^ 

\/   II.  The  Influence  of  Choral  Origin 133 

«/  III.  The  Influence  of  Actors 162 

IV.  The  Influence  of  Festival  Arrangements 196 

V.  The  Influence  of  Physical  Conditions 221 

VI.  The  Influence  of  Physical  Conditions  {Continued):    the 

Unities 246 

VII.  The  Influence  of  National  Customs  and  Ideas   ....   268 

VIII.  The  Influence  of  Theatrical  Machinery  and  Dramatic 

Conventions 284 

IX.  Theatrical  Records 318 

Corrigenda  et  Addenda 338 

Index  op  Passages 351 

General  Index 359 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

Medallion  of  Athenian  Coin  (see  p.  63,  n.  i)    .  .     Front  Cover 

Fig.    I. — The  Theater  of  Dionysus  Eleuthereus  at  Athens 

AS  Seen  from  the  Acropolis Frontispiece 

PAGE 

Fig.    2. — Sketch  Map  of  Attica  and  the  Peloponnesus,  Showing 

Early  Centers  of  Dramatic  Activities  in  Greece      3 

Fig.    3. — Caprine  Sileni  upon  the  Francois  Vase,  600-550  b.c. 

facing     26 

Fig.    4. — Preparations   for   a   Satyric  Drama  from  a  Naples 

Crater  of  About  400  b.c 25 

Figs.  5,  6. — Views  of  a  Satyr-Play  from  a  Dinos  in  Athens  facing  26 
Fig.  7. — Views  of  a  Satyr-Play  from  a  Dmos  in  Bonn  facing  26 
Fig.    8. — Poet  and  Choreutae  of  a  Satyric  Drama  from  a  Pom- 

PEiAN  Mosaic 28 

Fig.    g. — Satyrs  on  a  British  Museum  Crater  of  About  450  b.c.    30 
Fig.  10.— a  British  Museum  Psykter  by  Duris  of  About  480  b.c, 
Probably  Showing  Influence  of  Contemporaneous 
Satyric  Drama facing    31 

Fig.  II. — A  Satyr  upon  a  Wurzburg  Cylix  of  About  500  b.c. 

facing    32 

Fig.  12. — A  Comus  UPON  A  Berlin  Amphora facing  32 

Fig.  13. — A  Comus  upon  a  British  Museum  Oenochoe    .      .  facing  38 

Fig.  14. — A  Comus  upon  a  Berlin  Amphora 39 

Figs.  15,  16. — Comus  Scenes  upon  a  Boston  Skyphos      ....  40 

Fig.  17. — Comic  Actors  and  Flute  Players  upon  an  Attic  Vase 

in  Petrograd 47 

Fig.  18. — An  Attic  Terra  Cotta  in  Berlin  Representing  a  Comic 

Actor 48 

Fig.  19. — An  Attic  Terra  Cotta  in  Munich  Representing  a  Comic 

Actor 48 

Fig.  20. — Actors  of  Dorian  Comedy  lton  a  Corinthian  Crater 

IN  Paris .     49 

Fig.  21. — Actors  of  Dorian  Comedy  upon  a  Corinthian  Vase  .      .     50 

Fig.  22. — Ground  Plan  of  a  Greek  Theater  with  Names  of  Its 

Parts 57 

XXV 


xxvi  LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Fig.  23. — ^Cross-Section  of  a  Greek  Theater  with  Names  of  Its 

Parts 58 

Fig.  24. — Cross-Section  of  the  Graeco-Roman  Theater  at  Ephe- 

sus  WITH  Names  of  Its  Parts 61 

Fig.  25. — Theater  at  Oeniadae  in  Acarnania       ....  facing  62 

Fig.  26. — Theater  and  Temple  of  Apollo  at  Delphi      .     .  facing  62 

Fig.  27. — ^Theater  at  Megalopolis  in  Arcadia     ....  facing  62 

Fig.  28. — ^Theater  at  Pergamum  in  Asia  Minor    ....  facing  62 

Fig.  29. — Plan  of  the  Acropolis  at  Athens 62 

Fig.  30. — Athenian  Coin  in  the  British  Museum  Showing  the 
Parthenon  and  Outline  of  the  Theater  of  Dionysus 

Eleuthereus 63 

Fig.  31. — Parthenon  and  Theater  of  Dionysus;  in  Foreground 

Altar  in  Precinct  of  Dionysus  Eleuthereus   facing    64 

Fig.  32. — Precinct  of  Dionysus  Eleuthereus  in  Athens,  Showing 
Dorpfeld's  Restoration  of  the  Early  Orchestra 
and  of  the  Lycurgus  Theater 64 

Fig.  32a. — Cross-Section  of  Precinct  of  Dionysus  Eleuthereus 
in  Athens,  Showing  Later  and  Early  Temples  and 
Early  Terrace  and  Later  Orchestra 65 

Fig.  33. — East  Fragment  of   Wall   Belonging   to   the   Early 

Orchestra  in  Athens facing    64 

Fig.  34. — West   Fragment   of   Wall  Belonging  to  the  Early 

Orchestra  in  Athens facing    64 

Fig.  35. — Outline  of  the  Oldest  Walls  of  the  Scene-Building 

IN  Athens 67 

Fig.  36. — Theater  of  Dionysus  in  Athens  Looking  North:   Cho- 

REGic  Monument  of  Thrasyllus  in  the  Background 

facing    68 
Fig.  37. — Theater  of  Dionysus  in  Athens  Looking  North  and 

West facing    68 

Fig.  38.^ — Ground  Plan  of  the  Hellenistic  Theater  in  Athens 

According  to  Dorpfeld 71 

Fig.  39. — Nero  Balustrade  and  Pavement,  and  Phaedrus  Stage 

OF  the  Theater  in  Athens facing     72 

Fig.  40. — Plan  of  the  Romanized  Theater  in  Athens  According 

TO  Dorpfeld 73 

Fig.  41. — Frieze  OF  the  Phaedrus  Stage  in  Athens  .  .  .facing  72 
Fig.  42. — ViTRuvius'  Theatrum  Latinum  According  to  Dorpfeld  .  76 
Fig.  43. — ViTRUvius'  Theatrum  Graecorum  According  to  Dorpfeld  .     77 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS  xxvii 

PAGE 

Fig.  44. — Movements    of    the   Actors   in  Aristophanes'   Frogs, 

vss.  1-460 89 

Fig.  45. — Stone  Chair  of  the  Priest  of  Dionysus  Opposite  the 

Center  of  the  Orchestra  in  Athens  .  .  .  facing  90 
Fig.  46. — Plan  of  the  Theater  at  Epidaurus  in  Argolis  .  .  .102 
Fig.  47.— Epidaurus — the  Auditorium  from  the  North  .  facing  104 
Fig.  48. — Epidaurus — Orchestra  and  Scene-Building  from  the 

South facing  104 

Fig.  49. — Epidaurus— the  West  Parodus facing  104 

Fig.  50. — Epidaurus — the  East  Parodus facing  104 

Fig.  51. — Epidaurus — the  Gateway  in  the  West  Parodus  .  facing  104 
Fig.  52. — Epidaurus — ^Looking  through  the  West  Parodus  facing  104 
Fig.  53.— Ground  Plan  of  the  Theater  at  Eretria  in  Euboea  .  105 
Fig.  54.— Cross-Section  of  the  Theater  at  Eretria  ....  106 
Fig.  55. — The  Theater  at  Eretria  as  Seen  from  the  North- 
west       facing  106 

Fig.  56. — Ground  Plan  of  the  Theater  at  Oropus  in  Attica  .  .  109 
Fig.  57.— The  Scene-Building  of  the  Theater  at  Oropus  .  facing  106 
Fig.  58. — Ground  Plan  of  the  Graeco-Roman  Theater  at  Ter- 

messus no 

Fig.  59. — The   Proscenium   of   the   Graeco-Roman   Theater  at 

Ephesus facing  iii 

Fig.  60. — Ground  Plan  of  the  Early  Hellenistic  Theater  at 

Ephesus 112 

Fig.  61. — The  Later  Hellenistic  Theater  at  Ephesus:   Above, 
Elevation  of  Proscenium  and  Episcenium;    Below, 
Ground  Plan  of  Proscenium  and  Parodi    .      .      .     .113 
-Ground  Plan  of  the  Graeco-Roman  Theater  at  Ephe- 
sus   114 

-Ground  Plan  aistd  Cross-Section  of  the  Theater  at 
Priene 115 

-The  Theater  at  Priene  as  Seen  from  the  Southeast 

facing  III 

-A  "Wagon-Ship"  of  Dionysus  and  Processional  upon 
AN  Attic  Skyphos  in  Bologna  of  About  500  b.c.  facing  120 

-Ivory  Statuette  of  a  Tragic  Actor       ....  facing  162 

-Distribution  of  Roles  to  Actors  in  Sophocles'  Oedipus 
at  Colonus 180 


Fig. 

62. 

Fig. 

63.- 

Fig. 

64.- 

Fig. 

65.- 

Fig. 

66.- 

Fig. 

67.- 

xxviii  LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

VAfiR 

Fig.  68. — Mask  of  a  Slave  in  New  Comedy facing  212 

Fig.  69.— Terra  Cotta  Mask  in  Berlin  Representing  a  Cour- 
tesan IN  New  Comedy facing  212 

Fig.  70. — Ground  Plan  of  the  Theater  at  Thoricus  in  Attica  .   227 

Fig.  71. — Auditorium  and  Orchestra  of  the  Theater  at  Thori- 
cus    facing  228 

Fig.  72. — Horizontal  Sections  of  Proscenium  Columns  at  Megal- 
opolis, Eretria,  Epidaurus,  Delos,  and  Oropus   .      .   236 

Fig.  73. — A  Fourth-Century  Vase  in  Munich  Representing  the 

Vengeance  of  Medea 237 

Fig.  74. — The  Athenian  Theater  of  about  460  B.C.,  Showing  the 

Earlier  Type  of  Eccyclema 286 

Fig.  75. — Wilhelm's    Transcription   and    Restoration    of    Two 

Fragments  of  the  Athenian  Fasti 320 

Fig.  76a. — Wilhelm's  Transcription  and  Restoration  of  Two 

Fragments  of  the  Stone  Didascaliae  at  Athens  .  322 

Fig.  766. — Translation  of  Inscription  in  Fig.  76a 323 

Fig.  770. — A  Fragment  of  the  Athenian  Victors'-List       .  facing  324 

Fig.  776. — Wilhelm's  Transcription  and  Restoration   of  Two 

Fragments  of  the  Athenian  Victors'-List     .  facing  324 

Fig.  78. — Wilhelm's   Transcription  and  Restoration  of   Four 

Fragments  of  the  Athenian  Victors'-List  .328 

Fig.  79. — Wilhelm's  Transcription  and   Restoration    of    Five 

Fragments  of  THE  Athenian  Victors'-List  329 

Fig.  80. — The  Villa  Albani  Statue  of  Euripides  in  the  Louvre 
WITH  THE  Beginning  of  an  Alphabetical  List  of  His 
Plays facing  332 

Fig.  81.— Cross-Section  of  Orchestra-Terrace,  Orchestra,  and 
Auditorium  in  the  ^^eriods  of  Aeschylus  and  Lycur- 
GUS 340 

Fig.  82. — Orchestra-Terrace,  Orchestra,  and   Scene-Buildings 

OF  THE  LyCURGUS  ThEATER  SUPERIMPOSED  UPON  THE 

"  Orchestra-Terrace  OF  Aeschylus;  Constituting  also 

A  Plan  of  the  Supposed  Theater  of  about  460  b.c.  .  341 

Fig.  83. — ^Reconstruction  of  the  Hellenistic  Theater  at  Priene 

According  to  von  Gerkan facing  345 

Fig.  84. — Reconstruction   of   the    Graeco-Roman   Theater   at 

Priene  According  to  von  Gerkan 345 


Some  day  a  benefactor  of  his  kind 
may  prove  beyond  cavil  that  the  problem 
of  the  origin  of  tragedy  is  as  incapable  of 
solution  as  is  that  of  squaring  the  circle. — 

W.  S    BURKAGE. 


INTRODUCTION 

In  undertaking  to  treat  of  a  subject  concerning  hardly  a 
detail  of  which  can  any  statement  be  made  without  the  possibil- 
ity of  dispute,  the  unfortunate  necessity  rests  upon  me  of 
beginning  with  three  topics  which  are  the  most  controversial 
of  all — the  origin  of  tragedy,  the  origin  of  comedy,  and  the 
Greek  theater.  Instead  of  trying  to  conceal  our  ignorance  on 
these  matters  by  vague  generalities,  I  shall  set  forth  such  data 
as  are  known,  and  attempt,  clearly  and  frankly,  to  erect  hypoth- 
eses to  answer  the  questions  that  most  naturally  arise,  even 
though  this  very  striving  for  clearness  and  frankness  will  expose 
me  to  attack.  I  believe  with  Bacon  that  "  truth  emerges  sooner 
from  error  than  from  confusion,"  or,  as  a  recent  writer  has 
expressed  it,  that  "  the  definitizing  of  error  is  often  the  beginning 
of  its  disappearance."  Limits  of  space  will  require,  at  many 
points,  a  dogmatic  statement  of  my  views  without  stopping  to 
examine  the  evidence  from  every  angle.  It  must  be  under- 
stood, however,  that  no  account  of  these  subjects,  whoever  its 
author  or  however  detailed  his  treatment,  could  find  universal 
acceptance  or  anything  approaching  it. 


The  Origin  of  Tragedy.^ — It  is  still  the  canonical  doctrine, 
though  its  modern  history  goes  back  no  fdfrther  than  Welcker's 

'  Cf.  Welcker,  Nachtrag  zu  der  Schrift  iiher  die  Aeschylische  Trilogie  nehst 
einer  Ahhandlung  iiher  das  Satyrspiel  (1826);  Furtwangler,  "Der  Satyr  aus  Perga- 
mon,"  Berliner  Winckelmannsfest  Programm,  XL  (1880);  U.  von  Wilamowitz- 
Mollendorff,  Einleitung  in  die  griechische  Tragodie  [Vol.  I  of  his  edition  of  Euripides' 
Heracles  (1889)],  pp.  43  fF.  and  Nciie  J ahrhiicher  fiir  das  klassische  Altertum,  XXIX 
(1912),  464 ff.;  Bethe,  Prolegomena  zur  Gcschichle des  Theaters im  AUherlhum  (1896); 
G.  Korte,  "Satyrn  und  Bocke,"  in  Bethe's  Prolegomena,  pp.  339 ff.;  Wernicke, 
"Bockschore  und  Satyrdrama,"  Hermes,  XXXII  (1897),  290 ff.;  Schmid,  Zur 
Geschichte  des  gr.  Dithyrambus  (1901);  Reisch,  "Zur  Vorgeschichte  der  attischen 
Tragodie,"   in    Festschrift    Theodor   Gomperz    (1902),    pp.   451  ff.;    Crusius,   s.v. 


2  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

book  on  the  Satyr  spiel  in  1826  and  though  no  conclusive  testi- 
mony  for  this  view  can  be  cited  more  ancient  than  Byzantine 
tjrnps,J;ha.t  satyrir  rlrama  wa^  the  intprmpHiatft  staple  in  -the 
derivation  of  traged^y^from  the  dithyramb.  The  argument  runs 
somewhat  as  follows :  The  dithyramb  was  an  improvisational 
song  and  dance  in  honor  of  Dionysus  (Bacchus),  the  god  of  wine, 
and  was  performed  by  a  band  of  men  provided  with  goatlike 
horns,  ears,  hoofs,  and  tails  and  clad  in  a  goatskin  (or  in  a  goat- 
hair  loin-band)  in  imitation  of  Dionysus'  attendant  sprites,  the 
satyrs;  on  account  of  this  costume  the  choreutae  (members  of 
the  chorus)  were  sometimes  called  tragoi,  which  is  the  Greek 
word  for  ''goats";  in  certain  localities,  as  the  dithyramb  became 
quasi-literary  and  took  on  a  dramatic  element,  its  name  was 
changed  to  satyric  drama;  still  later,  as  these  tendencies 
increased,  especially  through  the  addition  of  an  actor,  the  satyr- 
play  came  to  be  called  tragoidia  ("goat-song"),  derived  from  the 
nickname  applied  to  the  caprine  choreutae;  the  chorus  still 
consisted  of  satyrs  and,  since  these  were  licentious,  bestial 
creatures,  the  performance  was  yet  crude  and  undignified; 
Aeschylus  (525-456  B.C.)  was  possibly  the  first  to  abandon  satyric 
choreutae  and  was  certainly  the  first  to  raise  tragedy  to  the  rank 
of  real  literature;  during  the  fifth  century  each  poet  was  required 
to  follow  his  group  of  three  tragedies  at  the  dramatic  festival 
with  a  satyr-play  as  a  concession  to  the  satyric  origin  of  the 
performance.  / 

" Dithyrambos," in  Pauly-Wissowa,  Real-Encyclopadie,Y ,  1203  ff.  (1903);  Dieterich. 
"Die  Entstehung  der  Tragodie,"  Archivjiir  Religionswisscnschaft,  XI  (1908),  163  ff. 
[Kleine  Schriften,  pp.  414  ff.];  Farnell,  Cults  of  the  Greek  States,  V,  85  ff.,  and 
especially  pp.  2245.  (1909),  and  "The  Megala  Dionysia  and  the  Origin  of 
Tragedy,"  Journal  of  Hellenic  Studies,  XXIX  (1909),  xlvii;  Ridgeway,  The  Origin 
of  Tragedy  with  Special  Reference  to  the  Greek  Tragedians  (1910),  and  The  Dramas 
and  Dramatic  Dances  of  Non-European  Races  in  Special  Reference  to  the  Origin  of 
Greek  Tragedy  (1915),  reviewed  by  Flickinger  in  Classical  Weekly,  XI  (1918), 
107  ff.;  Nilsson,  "Der  Ursprung  der  Tragodie,"  Neue  J ahrhiicher  fiir  das  klassische 
Altertum,  XXVII  (191 1),  609  ff.  and  673  ff.;  Jane  Harrison,  Themis,  a  Study  of 
the  Social  Origins  of  Greek  Religion  (1912);  Murray,  "The  Ritual  Forms  Preserved 
in  Greek  Tragedy,"  in  Miss  Harrison's  Themis,  pp.  341  ff.;  Flickinger,  "Tragedy 
and  Satyric  Drama,"  Classical  Philology,  VIII  (1913),  261  ff.;  and  Cook,  Zeus, 
a  Study  in  Ancient  Religion,  I  (19 14),  665  ff.  and  695  ff. 


INTRODUCTION  3 

In  recent  years,  essential  supports  of  this  doctrine  have 
slowly  crumbled  away  before  searching  investigation;  at 
present,  scarcely  a  single  clause  in  the  foregoing  sketch  would 
escape  unchallenged  by  some  scholar  of  deserved  standing.  An 
ever-increasing  number  of  students  believe  that  tragedy  is  not 


Fig.  2. — Sketch  Map  of  Attica  and  the  Peloponnesus,  Showing  Early  Centers 
of  Dramatic  Activities  in  Greece. 


the  child  of  the  satyr-play,  but  that  the  two  are  separate  in  their 
origin.  Unfortunately,  however,  these  dissenters,  including  such 
men  as  Dr.  Emil  Reisch  of  Vienna,  Mr.  Pickard-Cambridge  of 
Oxford,  Professor  Wilhelm  Schmid  of  Tubingen,  and  Professor 
William  Ridgeway  of  Cambridge,  though  they  are  unanimous  in 
rejecting  Welcker's  hypothesis,  cannot  agree  among  themselves 
as  to  a  constructive  policy.  My  own  view  is  that  tragedy  and 
satyric  drama  are  independent  offshoots  of  the  same  literary 


4  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

type,  the  Peloponnesian  dithyramb.  The  former  came  to 
Athens  from  Corinth  and  Sicyon  by  way  of  Icaria.  Somewhat 
later  the  latter  was  introduced  directly  from  Phlius  by  Pratinas, 
a  native  of  that  place.  My  reasons  for  these  opinions  will 
develop  in  the  course  of  the  discussion. 

Very  recently,  notable  efforts  have  been  put  forth  to  interpret 
the  religious  practices  of  the  Greeks,  partly  in  the  light  of  anthro- 
pology and  partly  in  accordance  with  the  new  psychological 
method  which  inquires,  not  what  the  god  is,  but  what  are  the 
social  activities  and  the  social  organization  of  his  devotees. 
Whatever  may  be  said  for  these  avenues  of  approach  in  other 
respects,  in  practice  those  who  employ  them  have  shown  more 
eagerness  to  assemble  data  which  might  be  considered  confirma- 
tory of  their  theories  than  to  reach  an  unprejudiced  interpreta- 
tion of  the  whole  body  of  ancient  evidence.  Thus,  much  has 
been  made  of  present-day  carnivals  in  Thessaly,  Thrace,  and 
Scyrus,^  and  these  ceremonies  are  employed  as  if  they  were 
assured  survivals  of  the  primitive  rites  from  which  Greek 
drama  developed  and  as  if  their  evidence  were  of  greater  value 
than  the  most  firmly  established  data  in  the  ancient  tradition. 
Now  the  a  priori  possibility  that  these  carnivals  should  retain 
their  essential  features  unchanged  through  two  and  a  half 
millenniums  amid  all  the  vicissitudes  which  have  come  upon 
these  regions  must  be  pronounced  infinitesimal.  And  an 
examination  of  the  details  confirms  this  impression.  Certain 
parts  of  the  ceremonies  are  parodies  of  the  Christian  rites  of 
marriage  and  burial.  Not  only  an  Arab  but  also  a  Frank  appear 
in  the  cast  of  characters.  Though  Phrynichus  is  said  to  have 
been  the  first  to  represent  female  roles,^  such  roles  abound  in 
these  modern  plays.  Yet  there  is  another  defect  in  this 
assumption  which  is  still  more  serious.  If  there  is  one  well- 
authenticated  fact  injthe^-bistery  ^rP^reek  drama,  expressly 
stateS^nTajraenrTnotices  and  fullvjubstantiated  by  the  extant 

'  Cf.  Lawson,  Annual  of  British  School  at  Athens,  VI  (1900),  125  ff.;  Dawkins, 
ihid.,  XI  (1905),  72  ff.;  and  Wace,  ibid.,  XVI  (1910),  232  2. 
'  Cf.  Suidas,  s.v.  "Phrynichus." 


INTRODUCTION  5 

plays^itisjhat_tragedy  arose  from  a  choral  performance  and 
only^gradually  acquired  its  histrionic  features.  On_the  con- 
trary, these  carnivals  are  predominantly  histrionic;  there  is 
eitlier~inj""cEorus  or  its  role  is  distinctly  secondary.  Had 
Aristotle  been  guilty  of  such  a,  faux  pas,  we  can  easily  imagine 
the  derisive  comments  in  which  modern  investigators  would 
have  indulged  at  his  expense. 

Of  course,  our  evidence  is  far  from  being  as  complete  as  we 
could  wish,  and  must  therefore  be  supplemented  at  many  points 
by  conjecture  pure  and  simple;  but  this  fact  does  not  justify  us 
in  throwing  all  our  data  overboard  and  in  beginning  de  novo. 
In  this  matter  we  have  been  too  prone  to  follow  a  practice  which 
the  late  Professor  Verrall  characterized,  in  a  different  connection, 
as  follows :  "We  are  perhaps  too  apt,  in  speculations  of  this  kind, 
to  help  a  theory  by  the  convenient  hypothesis  of  a  wondrous 
simpleton,  who  did  the  mangling,  blundering,  or  whatever  it  is 
that  we  require."''  Now,  whatever  may  be  true  in  other  cases, 
Aristotle  at  least  was  no  "simpleton,"  competent  only  to  mangle 
his  sources  of  information ;  and  furthermore,  apart  from  certain 
ethnographic  parallels  which  are  of  only  secondary  importance 
after  all,^  our  fund  of  knowledge  in  this  field  is  in  no  wise  com- 
parable with  his.  In  fact,  except  for  the  extant  plays  our 
information  is  almost  confined  to  what  we  derive,  directly  or 
indirectly,  from  him.  Since  this  is  so,  what  can  be  more  absurd 
than  to  reject  his  conclusions  and  have  recourse  to  unhampered 
conjecture  ? 

But  if  we  are  to  hold  fast  to  Aristotle,  one  precaution  is 
necessary — we  must  be  sure  that  we  do  not  make  him  say  more 
or  less  than  he  does  say.  He  wrote  for  a  very  different  audience 
from  that  which  now  reads  his  words  and  with  a  very  different 
purpose  from  that  to  which  his  book  is  now  put.  And  these 
factors  often  render  him  enigmatical.  This  resulted  also  from 
his  frequently  assuming  a  familiarity  with  things  which  now 

'  Cf.  Euripides  the  Rationalist,  p.  243. 

'  Cf.  von  Wilamowitz,  Neue  Jahrbiicher  J.  kl.  AUertum,  XXIX  (191 2),  474, 
and  Cook,  Zeus,  I,  xiii  f. 


6  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

cannot  always  be  taken  for  granted.  As  Professor  Bywater 
expressed  it:  " It  is  clear  from  Aristotle's  confession  of  ignorance 
as  to  comedy  that  he  knows  more  of  the  history  of  tragedy  than 
he  actually  tells  us,  and  that  he  is  not  aware  of  there  being  any 
serious  lacuna  in  it."^  Thus,  Aristotle  says  that  tragedy  was 
"  improvisational  by  origin"  and,  more  specifically,  was  derived 
"from  the  leaders  of  the  dithyramb."^  Though  this  expression 
unhappily  is  somewhat  lacking  in  precision,  the  main  item,  that 
the  dithyramb  is  the  parent  of  tragedy,  emerges  from  any 
interpretation.  Ridgeway  may  proceed  to  dissociate  the  dithy- 
ramb from  Dionysus  and  to  derive  it  from  ceremonies  at  the 
tombs  of  heroes  if  he  choose;  however  unwarranted,  that  is  at 
least  logical.  But  to  ignore  this  statement  of  Aristotle's  and  to 
seek,  as  many  do,  to  trace  tragedy  back  to  bpwixeva  ("ritual 
acts")  of  various  kinds  by  another  line  of  development  trans- 
gresses good  philological  practice. 

There  is  an  unfortunate  facility  in  such  attempts.  Tragedy 
embraced  many  diverse  elements  in  its  material  and  technique. 
Accordingly,  whatever  anyone  sets  out  to  find,  he  can  be  almost 
certain  of  discovering  there.  Thus,  Dieterich  with  his  theory 
of  the  development  of  tragedy  from  funeral  dirges,  the  Eleusinian 
mysteries,  and  various  aetiological  sources;  Ridgeway  with  his 
tomb  theory;  Miss  Harrison  with  her  "Year  Spirit"  (the 
Eniautos-Daimon)  and  sympathetic  magic;  and  Murray  with 
his  attempt  to  reconcile  and  expand  the  Dieterich-Harrison 
theories,  all  find  confirmation  for  their  views  in  the  same  body 
of  dramatic  literature.  The  very  facility  of  such  analyzing  is 
its  undoing. 

Moreover,  despite  numerous  attempts  to  the  contrary,  the 
real  nature  of  the  primitive  dithyramb  can  scarcely  be  a  matter 
of  doubt.     Plato^jadia-was^glso  no  "simpleton,"  defined  it  as  a 

'  Cf .  his  Aristotle  on  the  Art  of  Poetry,  p.  135.  This  opinion  is  confirmed  by  the 
fact  that  men  of  such  importance  as  Thespis  and  Phrynichus  are  not  so  much  as 
mentioned  in  the  Poetics. 

^  Cf .  Poetics  144909-11:  yevofjAvq  <5'>  ott'  &px^^  ainovxediaffTi.K'ft,  .... 
KoX  7}  nhv  a.irh  twv  i^apx^VTUv  rbv  didvpa/jL^ov. 


INTRODUCTION  7 

song  in  celebration  of  the  birth. of .IMonysus.V  Now  since  the 
dithyrarnb  IS  known  to  have  been  opened  up  to  a  wider  range  of 
themes  considerably  before  Plato's  time,  his  definition  must  apply 
to  the  original  meaning  of  the  term.  This  interpretation  does 
not  remain  unsupported.  Thus,  the  first  extant  instance  of  the 
words  occurs  in  a  fragment  of  Archilochus  {ca.  680-640  B.C.),  who 
declares  that  he  ''knows  how,  when  his  heart  is  crazed  with  wine, 
to  lead  lord  Dionysus'  dithyramb."^  It  should  be  observed  that 
Archilochus  does  not  say  that  he  knows  how  to  write  a  dithyramb, 
but  how  to  take  part  in  one  as  a  drunken  e^dpxoov  ("leader")- 
Such  a  performance  was  doubtless,  as  Aristotle  said,  largely 
improvisational,  being  perhaps  coupled  with  the  rendition  of 
some  ritual  chant  (koXov  /xtXos).  Dionysus  is  characterized  as 
6 pLajx§o-dLdv pantos  ("celebrated  in  dithyrambs")  by  Fr^ihas^ 
and  addressed  as  diBvpafx^os  by  Eurfpides  in  his  Bacchanals,  vs. 
526.  In  an  ode  in  honor  of  the  victories  which  were  won  by 
Xenophon  of  Corinth  in  464  b.c.  Pindar  inquires,  "Whence 
appeared  the  charms  of  Dionysus  in  connection  with  the  ox- 
driving  dithyramb  ?  "'•  Here,  also,  the  author  is  not  referring  to 
the  Corinthian  dithyramb  of  his  own  day  but  to  the  period  when 

'  Cf.  Laws  700  B:    Kal  dWo  (sc.  elSoy  <i>Srjs)   Aiovvffov  yiveais,  olfiai,  SLdvpan^os 
\ey6fjLevos. 

^  Cf.  Bergk,  Poetae  Lyrici  Graeci*,  II,  404,  fr.  77: 

ojs  Ai.ovijffoi''  AvaKTOs  KaXbv  i^dp^ai  ixiXos 
olda  didvpa/x^ov,  otvif  ffvyKepavvudels  <ppivas. 

s  Cf.  ibid.,  Ill,  559,  fr.  i,  vs.  16. 

*  Cf.  Olymp.  XIII,  18  f. :    toX  Alovihtov  irSOev  i^4<pav€v 

BoriXdrq.  is  usually  explained  by  reference  to  the  ox  prize,  cf.  schol.  Plato,  Republic, 
394C:  evpedijvai  jxkv  rhv  diOvpafi^ov  iv  KoplvOq)  virb  ' Xplovbi  <paffi.  tQv  di  wot.r]rQv 
tQ  p,kv  irpdiTCf)  ^oDs  eiraOXov  Tjv,  t^  Si  5evT^p(p  ap.<pope'ui,  r^  5k  rplrq)  rpdyos,  6v  rpvyl 
Kexpt(rp.ivov  dirriyov.  Kern,  Crusius,  and  Ridgeway,  however,  refer  it  to  the  prac- 
tice of  an  Arcadian  community,  the  Cynaethaens,  of  whom  Pausanias  (viii.  19.  i) 
speaks  as  follows:  "And  as  to  the  things  most  worthy  of  mention  there  is  a  shrine  of 
Dionysus  there,  and  in  the  winter  season  they  celebrate  a  festival,  in  which  men 
who  have  anointed  themselves  with  oil  lift  up  a  bull  from  the  herd,  whatever 
one  the  god  himself  puts  in  their  minds  to  lift,  and  carry  it  to  the  shrine.  Such 
was  their  manner  of  sacrifice."  Cf.  Pauly-Wissowa,  V,  1041  and  1206,  and  Origin 
of  Tragedy,  p.  6. 


8  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

it  was  put  upon  a  quasi-literary  level  by  Arion  (see  below). 
Finally,  Epicharmus  went  so  far  as  to  declare  that  "when  you 
drink  water,  it  isn't  a  dithyramb,"'  showing  that  the  more 
primitive  meaning  of  the  term  was  not  crowded  out  by  later 
developments.  These  passages  are  sufi&cient  to  show  that 
the  dithyramb  was  at  all  times  intimately  associated  with 
Dionysus  and  at  the  beginning  belonged  to  him  exclusively; 
their  force  is  not  invahdated  by  the  acknowledged  fact  that  at 
an  early  period  (see  p.  ii,  below)  the  restriction  was  broken 
down. 

It  was  not  until  after  the  middle  of  the  seventh  century  that 
the  dithyramb  became  "poetized."  This  step  was  taken  by 
Arion  of  Methymna  in  Lesbos,  then  resident  in  Corinth.  His 
connection  with  the  dithyramb  and  early  tragedy  is  vouched  for 
by  irrefutable  evidence.  Solon  of  Athens  (639-559  B.C.)  is 
said  in  a  recently  discovered  notice^  to  have  declared  in  his 
Elegies  that  "Arion  introduced  the  first  drama  of  tragedy." 
The  question  immediately  arises  as  to  exactly  what  language 
Solon  had  employed.  The  words  rrjs  rpaycodlas  TrpccTov  dpa/xa  are, 
of  course,  only  a  paraphrase,  for  no  form  of  the  word  rpaycoSia  can 
be  used  in  elegiac  verse.  This  objection  does  not  lie  against  the 
word  dpana,  however,  and  it  will  be  remembered  that  the  Dorians 
based  their  claims  to  tragedy  partly  upon  this  non-Attic  term.^ 
Thus,  we  obtain  an  explanation  of  the  cumbersome  circumlo- 
cution "the  first  drama  of  tragedy."  In  Solon's  Elegies  the 
author  of  this  notice  (or  his  source)  found  only  the  ambiguous 
term  dpafxa.  A  desire  to  retain  the  terminology  of  the  original 
prevented  his  frankly  substituting  rpaycpdla.  Accordingly,  he 
kept  dpafia  but  inserted  the  qualifying  genitive  rfjs  rpaycodlas. 
I  do  not  understand  that  Aristotle  either  indorses  or  rejects  the 

'  Cf.  Kaibel,  Comicorum  Graecorum  Fragmenta,  p.  115,  fr.  132; 
bvK  fffTi  diOvpafipos  5kx'  vSwp  tt^js. 

'  Published  by  Rabe  in  Rheinisches  Museum  fur  Philologie,  LXIII  (190S),  150. 

3  Cf.  Aristotle's  Poetics  144861:  Kal  rb  Troielv  airol  [sc.  ol  Awpiets]  fiiv  SpSLv, 
A0T]vaiovs  5i  irpdTTeiv  irpocrayocreveiv.  In  referring  to  this  passage  von  Wilamowitz 
says:  "So  viel  wahr  ist,  dass  SpcLf^a  in  der  Tat  ein  Fremdwort  ist;  man  redet  im 
Kultus  nur  von  dptbueva" ;   cf.  op.  cit.,  p.  467,  n.  3. 


INTRODUCTION  9 

Dorian  pretensions  with  respect  to  this  word;  but  in  view  of 
our  present  evidence  I  am  of  the  opinion  that  Arion  called  his 
performances  "dramas"  and  was  the  first  to  use  the  word  in 
this  sense  and  that  there  is  so  much  of  justice  in  the  Dorian 
claims.  It  is  not  necessary  to  beheve,  however,  that  they  were 
ever  called  satyric  dramas,  see  pp.  11  and  22,  below. 

Now,  Dr.  Nilsson  has  objected  that  Solon  would  have  had  no 
occasion  to  express  his  opinion  upon  a  matter  of  this  kind  {op.  cit., 
p.  611,  note).  But  the  mention  of  the  title  of  the  work  from 
which  the  citation  purports  to  come  goes  far  to  substantiate  its 
genuineness.  Furthermore,  Solon  was  incensed  at  Thespis  (see 
pp.  17  f.,  below),  and  therefore  it  was  only  natural  that  he  should 
take  an  interest  in  the  matter,  assign  the  distinction  to  another, 
and  state  his  opinion  in  as  public  a  manner  as  possible.  The  fact 
that  he  lived  in  the  days  before  real  (Aeschylean)  tragedy  and 
before  the  importance  of  Thespis'  innovations  was  understood 
explains  the  error  in  his  judgment.  But  at  the  very  least,  this 
notice  proves  that  the  tradition  of  Arion's  connection  with 
tragedy  was  current  as  early  as  the  first  half  of  the  sixth 
century. 

Pindar's  reference  to  the  development  of  the  dithyramb  at 
Corinth  has  already  been  mentioned.  In  the  next  generation 
Herodotus  characterized  Arion  as  follows:  "Arion  was  second 
to  none  of  the  harpists  of  that  time  and  was  the  first  of  the  men 
known  to  us  to  compose  {iroL-qo-avTo)  a  dithyramb  and  to  give  it 
a  name  {bvoixacravra)  and  to  represent  it  at  Corinth"  (I,  23). 
It  is  customary  nowadays  to  seek  to  explain  such  notices  as 
arising  from  the  rival  claims  of  jealous  cities;  but  be  it  noted 
that  here  are  two  Attic  sympathizers,  Solon  and  Herodotus, 
granting  full  recognition  to  the  literary  achievements  of  a  neigh- 
boring city.  In  fact,  Herodotus  is  apparently  too  generous,  for 
Arion  could  not  have  been  the  inventor  of  the  dithyramb,  broadly 
speaking.  But  iroielv  denotes  not  only  "to  compose"  but  also 
"to  poetize,"  and  the  latter  translation  is  in  better  accord  with 
what  else  we  know  of  Arion's  contribution  to  the  history  of  the 
dithyramb.     On  the  other  hand,  ovonacravTa  probably  means 


lO  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

that  in  Herodotus'  opinion  Arion  was  the  first  to  give  names 
(titles)  to  his  performances/ 

A  Byzantine  writer  repeats  and  amplifies  Herodotus'  state- 
ments but  adds  one  interesting  clause  to  the  effect  that  Arion 
"  introduced  satyrs  speaking  in  meter.  "^  In  this  there  is  nothing 
surprising.  In  the  Peloponnesus  caprine  satyrs  were  regular 
attendants  upon  Dionysus,  and  in  consequence  the  dithyrambic 
choreutae  must  usually  have  been  thought  of  as  satyrs.  Their 
improvisations,  also,  must  always  have  engaged  the  speaking  as 
well  as  the  singing  voice.  This  fact,  however,  did  not  at  this 
time  involve  histrionic  impersonation  (/itjurjats)  for  the  reason 
that  they  would  not  attempt  to  say  what  was  appropriate  to 
satyrs  but  to  themselves  in  propria  persona  as  revelers  and 
worshipers.  The  word  eix/jLerpa  ("in  meter"),  therefore,  is  the 
important  one.  The  use  of  meter  marked  the  coming  of  artistic 
finish  and  the  passing  of  a  performance  largely  extemporaneous. 
Some  idea  of  the  technique  of  Arion's  productions  may  be  drawn 
from  a  dithyramb  by  Bacchylides  (first  half  of  the  fifth  century) 
in  honor  of  Theseus.  This  is  in  the  form  of  a  lyric  dialogue  and 
was  doubtless  influenced  somewhat  by  contemporaneous  tragedy. 
The  chorus  of  Athenians,  addressing  Aegeus,  king  of  Athens, 
inquires  why  a  call  to  arms  has  been  sounded  (vss.  1-15),  and 
the  coryphaeus  ("chorus-leader")  replies  that  a  herald  has  just 
arrived  and  summarizes  his  message  (vss.  16-30).  The  chorus 
asks  for  further  details  (vss.  31-45),  and  once  more  the  king's 
reply  is  borrowed  from  the  herald  (vss.  46-60).  Here  Theseus, 
not  Dionysus,  is  the  theme  of  the  poem;   the  choreutae  do  not 

'  Cf.  Haigh,  The  Tragic  Drama  of  the  Greeks  (1896),  p.  17,  n.  i,  and  Pickard- 
Cambridge  in  Classical  Review,  XXVI  (191 2),  54.  It  is  also  possible  that  Arion's 
employment  of  a  new  generic  term  (Spd/iara)  for  his  dithyrambs  is  alluded  to. 
Herodotus  may  have  taken  it  as  a  matter  of  course  that  everyone  knew  what  this 
new  name  was  and  consequently  failed  to  mention  it,  thus  leaving  the  passage 
ambiguous. 

^  Cf .  Suidas,  s.v.  "Arion":  X^yerai  Kal  rpayiKoO  Tp6irov  evperrjs  yeviadai  koX 
irpdros  x°P^^  (TTTJffai  <ki5k\ioj'>  kuI  dLdipa/M^ov  j.craL  Kal  dvefidffai  rb  q.56p.€vov  vtto 
ToD  xopov  Kal  aarvpovs  eicxeveyKdv  efj.fj.eTpa  Xiyovras.  I  cannot  agree  with  Reisch, 
Op.  cit.,  p.  47i>  and  Pickard-Cambridge,  op.  cit.,  p.  54,  in  thinking  that  this  notice 
refers  to  three  separate  types  of  performances  instead  of  one. 


INTRODUCTION  II 

represent  satyrs,  but  appear  in  their  true  character  as  plain 
citizens  of  Athens;  and  the  coryphaeus  is  given  a  dramatic 
character,  that  of  Aegeus.  These  are  all  developments  later 
than  the  time  of  Arion ;  nevertheless,  the  general  effect  must  have 
been  much  the  same. 

Before  the  close  of  the  sixth  century  the  dithyramb  had 
become  a  regular  form  of  literature — a  chorus  of  fifty,  dancing 
and  singing  formal  compositions.  In  508  B.C.  a  contest  of  dithy- 
rambic  choruses  of  men  was  made  a  standing  feature  of  the  pro- 
gram at  the  City  Dionysia  in  Athens.  Simonides  (556-467  B.C.) 
is  known  to  have  composed  a  dithyramb  entitled  Memnon,  the 
exclusively  Dionysiac  character  of  the  genre  being  then,  if  not 
earlier,  abandoned.  But  it  is  important  to  remember  that  ori- 
ginally the  dithyramb  was  extemporaneous  and  confined  to  the 
worship  and  exaltation  of  Dionysus. 

In  the  new  notice  concerning  Solon  and  Arion,  von  Wila- 
mowitz  finds  *'die  Bestatigung  dass  die  rpayuidol  vor  Thespis 
bestanden"  (cf.  op.  cit.,  p.  470).  This  development  could 
scarcely  have  taken  place  at  Corinth  in  Arion's  time,  for  there 
was  no  need  of  coining  a  new  word  to  designate  the  performers 
so  long  as  they  appeared  as  satyrs.  And  if  a  term  had  then  been 
derived  from  the  choreutae  to  designate  their  performance,  it 
must  have  been  *(rarupa;5ta  and  not  t payoph'ia.  Neither  could  the 
new  term  have  been  derived  at  this  period  from  the  prize,  for 
then  the  goat  was  onlv  the  third  award. ^  Let  us  therefore  turn 
to  Sicyon. 

In  a  well-known  passage  (v.  67)  Herodotus  tells  how  the 
Sicyonians  used  to  honor  their  former  king,  Adrastus,  in  other 
ways,  and  in  particular  celebrated  his  sorrows  with  "tragic" 
(or  "goat")  choruses  (rpajiKo'Lcn  xopolcn)  and  how  their  tyrant 
Clisthenes  in  anger  at  Adrastus  assigned  these  choruses  to 
Dionysus  and  the  other  features  of  the  rites  to  Melanippus. 
Melanippus  in  his  lifetime  had  killed  Adrastus'  brother  and 
son-in-law,  and  Clisthenes  had  brought  his  bones  from  Thebes 
and  transferred  to  him  part  of  the  honors  which  had  previously 

'  See  p.  7,  n.  4,  above. 


12  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

been  paid  to  Adrastus,  in  order  to  insult  the  latter  as  outrageously 
as  possible.  The  superimposition  of  the  worship  of  Dionysus 
upon  that  of  the  local  hero  and  the  reference  to  tragic  choruses 
have  furnished  Ridgeway  a  foundation  upon  which  to  rear  his 
theory  that  tragedy  developed  from  ceremonies  at  the  tombs  of 
heroes.  In  this  passage  the  meaning  of  the  word  rpayLKolat,  has 
provoked  much  discussion.  I  believe  that  Herodotus  meant 
rpayLKos  here  in  the  sense  current  in  his  own  day,  viz.,  tragic, 
but  I  do  not  believe  that  he  stopped  to  consider  whether  these 
Sicyonian  dances  ''were  sufficiently  like  the  choruses  in  the 
tragedies  of  his  contemporaries  to  be  called  'tragic.'"^  I  think 
he  employed  that  adjective  simply  because  TpayiKol  xopo'i-  was 
the  Sicyonians'  own  designation  for  their  performances.  If  so, 
whatever  TpayLKolcn  xopol(n  connoted  to  Herodotus,  or  even  to 
contemporaneous  Sicyonians,  originally  TpayiKos  in  this  phrase 
must  have  meant  "goat,"  and  these  choruses  must  originally 
have  been,  for  whatever  reason,  "goat"  choruses. 

Some  considered  Epigenes  of  Sicyon  the  first  tragic  poet, 
Thespis  being  second  (or  as  others  thought,  sixteenth)  in  the  list.^ 
In  connection  with  Epigenes  another  tradition  must  be  men- 
tioned. Several  explanations  are  preserved  of  the  proverb 
ov8ey  irpos  tov  Aiouvaov  ("nothing  to  do  with  Dionysus") .  These 
are  somewhat  vague  in  details  and  need  not  be  taken  too 
seriously;  but  at  least  they  are  valuable  as  showing  the  general 
periods  in  which  their  authors  thought  that  the  proper  situation 
for  the  rise  of  such  a  proverb  had  existed.  According  to  one 
account,  this  expression  was  uttered  "when  Epigenes  had  com- 
posed a  tragedy  in  honor  of  Dionysus."^  In  just  what  particular 
Epigenes'  performance  seemed  alien  to  the  worship  of  Dionysus 
the  retailers  of  the  anecdote  do  not  specify.     Ridgeway  supposes 

'  Cf.  Pickard-Cambridge,  op.  cit.,  p.  55. 

^  Cf .  Suidas,  S.V.  "Thespis":  ©^(TTrti  '\Kaplov  7r6Xews  AxTt/c^s,  rpayLKbs  iKKai- 
d^Karos  dnb  tov  irpuTov  yevofnivov  TpayifiSioiroiov  'EirtY^voiis  rov  HiiKvuviov  TiOi/xevos, 
o)i  d4  Tives,  devrepos  fiera  'E,iriy4v7}v  fiXXot  5^  avrbv  TrpCjTov  rpayiKhv  yev^adai 
ipaa-l. 

3  Cf.  Suidas,  s.v.,  Photius,  s.v.,  and  Apostolius  xiii.  42:  'Einy^vov  tov  HiikvuvIov 
TpaytfiSlav  els  t6v  Aidvvffov  Troi'^cravros,  iirecfxivrja'di'  rives  tovto-     60ev  tj  irapoi/j-la. 


INTRODUCTION  13 

that  Epigenes  "did  not  confine  himself  to  Dionysiac  subjects."^ 
But  surely  that  development  came  much  later.  In  my  opinion, 
the  explanation  is  simpler.  We  have  no  information  as  to  the 
costume  which  the  choreutae  wore  in  honoring  the  sorrows  of 
Adrastus.  There  was,  of  course,  no  reason  for  their  appearing 
as  satyrs.  But  were  satyric  choreutae  introduced  at  the  same 
time  that  the  dances  were  given  over  to  Dionysus  ?  If  we  answer 
this  question  in  the  negative,  the  situation  becomes  clear.  The 
audience,  or  part  of  it,  was  sufficiently  acquainted  with  the 
performances  instituted  by  Arion  at  Corinth  to  expect  a  chorus 
of  satyrs  in  the  Sicyonian  dances  after  they  were  transferred  to 
Dionysus.  And  when  Epigenes  brought  on  his  choreutae  in  the 
same  (non-satyric)  costume  as  had  previously  been  employed, 
they  naturally  manifested,  their  surprise  with  the  ejaculation: 
oudev  Trpos  top  ^lovvaov.  By  this  they  meant:  "Why,  these 
choreutae  are  just  what  we  have  had  all  the  time;  there  is 
nothing  of  the  satyrs  about  them.  They  have  nothing  to  do 
with  Dionysus." 

Practically  everyone  is  convinced  that  rpayuibia  means 
"goat-song."  The  only  difficulty  consists  in  explaining  how 
this  name  came  to  be  applied.  We  have  already  noted  (see 
p.  2,  above)  that  Welcker  explained  it  on  the  basis  of  costume, 
and  this  is  now  the  prevailing  view.  But  though  the  choreutae 
at  Corinth  were  satyrs,  there  were  good  reasons  why  no  new  term 
should  be  coined  there  to  designate  them  (see  p.  11,  above),  and 
in  fact,  Tpaycjobia,  rpaycodos  ("goat-singer"),  and  rpayiKos  (in  a 
technical  sense)  apparently  did  not  originate  there.  On  the 
other  hand,  in  Sicyon  (where  at  least  the  expression  rpayLKol 
XopoL,  if  not  the  others,  seems  to  have  been  in  use  at  an  early 
day)  the  costume  of  the  choreutae  was  assuredly  not  caprine 
before  the  dances  were  transferred  from  Adrastus  to  Dionysus 
and  probably  was  not  thereafter.  Consequently,  Welcker's 
explanation  must  be  rejected. 

But  the  earliest  and  favorite  explanation  of  these  terms  in 
antiquity  derived  them  from  the  fact  that  a  goat  was  given  to  the 

'  Cf.  The  Origin  of  Tragedy,  p.  58. 


14  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

victorious  poet  as  a  prize.^  Knowledge  and  approval  of  this 
interpretation  can  be  traced  almost  uninterruptedly  from  the 
high  authority  of  the  Parian  Chronicle^  in  the  third  century  B.C. 
onward,  and  there  is  no  cogent  reason  for  doubting  its  truth. 
The  other  suggestion  that  the  name  was  derived  from  the  goat 
which  was  offered  in  sacrifice  in  connection  with  the  performances 
will  be  seen  not  to  conflict  with  this  view  when  it  is  remembered 
that  in  the  later  dithyrambic  contests  the  prize  (a  tripod)  was 
not  regarded  as  the  personal  possession  of  the  victor  but  was 
customarily  consecrated  in  some  temple  or  other  public  place. 
In  my  opinion,  these  explanations  have  been  most  unwarrant- 
ably abandoned  in  modern  times,  and  I  think  a  reaction  in  their 
favor  has  set  in.  They  are  spoken  of  respectfully  by  Dr.  Reisch,^ 
and  Mr.  Pickard-Cambridge  mentions  them  exclusively.'* 

Now  the  transfer  of  the  Sicyonian  dances  from  Adrastus  to 
Dionysus  would  probably  happen  early  in  the  reign  of  Clisthenes 
{ca.  595-560  B.C.),  and  for  this  very  period  Eusebius  preserves  a 
notice  to  the  effect  that  "  a  goat  was  given  to  contestants  among 
the  Greeks,  and  from  this  fact  they  were  called  Tpayimi.^^^  I 
therefore  believe  that  Herodotus,  Eusebius  (Jerome),  and  Suidas 
all  refer  to  the  same  event :  that  Clisthenes  of  Sicyon  established 
the  goat  prize  about  590  B.C.  when  he  surrendered  to  Dionysus 

'  About  a  dozen  explanations  in  addition  to  those  discussed  in  the  text  are 
listed  and  criticized  in  Classical  Philology,  VIII  (1913),  269  ff. 

'  Cf.  Jacoby,  Das  M armor  Parmm,  p.  14:  a0'  oD  Qiu-wiz  6  iroft)Tr]s  [vneKpLua]To 
irpwTos,  Si  iSlSa^e  [5p]S.[fjLa  iv  &\(Tt[€l  Kal  adXov  i]T^6ri  6  [rjpdyos,  eri]  HHP[AA], 
&PXOVTOS  ' A6[-^vTiai]  .  .  .   vatov  tov  irpor^pov. 

J  Cf.  op.  cit.,  p.  468:  "An  der  Tatsache,  dass  in  alterer  Zeit  dem  Tragodenchor 
ein  Bock  als  Preis  (der  als  Opferthier  und  Opferschmaus  dienen  sollte),  gegeben 
wurde,  wie  dem  Dithyrambenchor  zu  gliechem  Zwecke  ein  Stier,  daran  zu  zweifeln 
ist  kein  Grund." 

4  Cf.  op.  cit.,  p.  59:  "Since  the  interpretation  of  rpayi^Ua  as  the  'song  of  the 
men  in  goat-costume'  must  be  given  up,  the  word  can  be  interpreted  as  the  'song 
around'  or  '/or  the  goat' — whether  the  goat  be  sacrifice  or  prize." 

s  Cf.  Eusebius'  Chronica,  01.  47,  2  (591-590  B.C.;  Armenian  version,  CI.  48,  i): 
TotJ  ayuvL^ofxivois  Trap'  WSXtjcri  rpdyoi  iSidoro,  d(p  oD  Kal  rpayiKol  iKki^dyjaav. 
Jerome's  Latin  version  reads:  "his  temporibus  certantibus  in  agone  (de  voce  add. 
R)  tragus,  id  est  hircus,  in  praemio  dabatur.     Unde  aiunt  tragoedos  nuncupatos." 


INTRODUCTION  15 

the  dances  which  had  previously  been  performed  in  honor  of 
Adrastus/  that  Epigenes  was  the  poet  whom  CHsthenes  employed 
to  initiate  this  innovation,  and  that  non-satyric  choreutae  and 
the  terms  rpayuos,  rpaycpdos,  etc.,  arose  in  this  manner,  time,  and 
place.  The  neatness  with  which  these  notices  fit  together  to 
produce  this  result  renders  them  comparatively  secure  from  the 
critical  assault  which  might  more  successfully  be  directed 
against  them  individually.  In  any  case,  it  is  incumbent  upon 
any  skeptic,  not  merely  to  reject  the  later  authorities,  but  also 
to  provide  a  more  satisfactory  explanation  of  Herodotus. 

If  this  series  of  conclusions  is  accepted,  we  have  an  answer 
to  the  question  under  consideration — the  occasion  of  the  term 
rpayctidoL  We  must  conclude  that  honoring  Adrastus  with 
choruses  either  did  not  involve  the  giving  of  a  prize  or  that  the 
prize  was  other  than  a  goat.  With  the  transfer  to  Dionysus,  a 
goat  (for  some  reason)  was  chosen  as  the  object  of  competition, 
and  was  doubtless  immediately  consumed  in  a  sacrificial  feast. 
We  have  seen  that  at  Corinth,  where  the  choreutae  were  satyrs, 
there  was  no  reason  to  coin  a  new  term  to  designate  them.  But 
at  Sicyon  the  situation  was  different.  What  more  natural  than 
that  from  the  new  prize  should  be  derived  new  names  {rpayLKol 
Xopol  and  rpaycodol  respectively)  for  the  new-old  performances 
and  their  choreutae.^  It  is  not  enough  to  pass  this  tradition  of 
Sicyonian  tragedy  by  in  silence  or  to  brand  it  as  aetiological  or  as 
arising  from  the  partisanship  of  rival  cities.  It  must  first  be 
shown  to  be  inconsistent,  either  with  itself  or  with  other 
established  facts. 

Hitherto  we  have  dealt  with  the  Peloponnesus,  which  was 
inhabited  by  the  Dorian  branch  of  the  Greek  stock;  at  this  point 
we  pass  to  Attica,  which  was  Ionic.     We  are  indebted  to  the 

^  Contrary  to  Herodotus,  these  choruses  were  rpaytKol  only  after  the  transfer, 
not  before — a  negligible  error. 

*  Of  course,  it  is  possible  to'  argue  that  goats  may  have  been  sacrificed  to 
Adrastus  and  that  rpayiKb^  and  Tpaycp56i  were  consequently  older  terms  than  is 
maintained  in  the  text;  this  would  also  explain  why  the  goat  was  continued  as  a 
prize  after  the  sacrifice  proper  had  been  given  over  to  Melanippus.  Cf.,  however, 
Farnell,  Cults  of  the  Greek  States,  V,  233  and  note  d. 


l6  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

late  Professor  Furtwangler  {op.  cit.,  pp.  22  £f.)  for  having  pointed 
out  that  among  the  Dorians  the  attendant  sprites  of  Dionysus 
were  caprine  satyrs,  but  that  among  the  lonians  he  was  attended 
by  sileni,  creatures  with  equine  ears,  hoofs,  and  tails.  Caprine 
satyrs  do  not  appear  upon  Attic  vases  until  about  450  B.C.  (see 
p.  24,  below).  Although  the  sort  of  dances  from  which  tragedy 
developed  had  existed  in  Attica  from  time  immemorial,'  yet 
they  did  not  emerge  into  prominence  and  literary  importance 
until  the  age  of  Thespis  and  in  Icaria.  Evidently  Thespis' 
innovations  were  partly  borrowed  from  the  Peloponnesus  and 
partly  his  own.  Included  among  the  former  would  be  the  drop- 
ping of  improvisation,  the  use  of  meter,  the  goat  prize,  and  such 
terms  as  dpaixa  and  rpaycodos.  Most  distinctive  among  the  latter 
was  his  invention  of  the  first  actor.  In  early  choral  performances 
it  was  customary  for  the  poet  himself  to  serve  as  coryphaeus, 
and  in  Bacchylides'  dithyramb  we  have  seen  how  the  coryphaeus 
was  set  apart  from  the  other  choreutae,  answering  the  questions 
which  they  propounded.  It  was  inevitable  that  to  someone 
should  come  the  happy  thought  of  developing  this  role  still 
further  and  of  promoting  the  coryphaeus  to  a  position  inde- 
pendent of  the  chorus.  It  is  significant  that  the  verb  which  was 
first  used  to  designate  the  actor's  function  was  a-woKpiveadai 
("to  answer"),  and  that  until  the  time  of  Sophocles  all  play- 
wrights were  actors  in  their  own  productions.  We  are  now  in  a 
position  to  realize  the  true  inwardness  of  Aristotle's  phrase:  he 
does  not  say  merely  that  tragedy  was  derived  from  the  dithyramb 
but  from  the  "leaders"  of  the  dithyramb. 
/y^  We  have  noted  that  the  early  dithyramb  did  not  require 
y  impersonation  (see  p.  10,  above).  Even  at  an  advanced  stage 
it  was  probably  much  like  a  sacred  oratorio  of  modern  times  in 
which  the  performers  may  sing  words  which  are  appropriate  to 
characters  and  yet  make  no  attempt  by  costume,  gestures,  or 
actions  to  represent  those  characters.     Thespis  changed  all  this. 

'  Cf.  Plato  Minos  32 lA:  ^  5^  rpayi^dla  ia-rl  iraXatdv  ivOdde,  ovx  ws  oiovrai  dw& 
Oi<nri5o^  ap^anivT)  oi)5'  awb  ^pvvlxov,  dW  el  6i\eis  ivvoTJffai.,  irdw  iraXaibv  avrb 
evpi^jeis  ov  Trj(rde  rrji  TroXews  evprifia. 


INTRODUCTION  17 

Since  he  assumed  an  actor's  role  himself,  first  of  all  probably  that 
of  Dionysus,  the  choreutae  could  no  longer  conduct  themselves 
as  worshipers  in  disguise,  but  must  now  not  merely  look  like 
real  attendants  of  Dionysus  but  also  behave  as  such.  This 
is  a  fundamental  matter.  Only  after  this  step  had  been  taken 
could  real  drama  in  the  modern  sense  become  possible.  Neither 
honoring  the  sorrows  of  Adrastus  nor  the  "fore-doing"  of  imita- 
tive magic,  not  even  the  primitive  bpcoixeva  at  Eleusis  or  elsewhere 
demanded  or  presupposed  actual  impersonation.  This  develop- 
ment took  place  at  Icaria  and  by  the  agency  of  Thespis.  I  cannot 
do  better  than  to  quote  certain  sentences  of  Miss  Harrison's: 

We  are  apt  to  forget  that  from  the  epos,  the  narrative,  to  the  drama,  the 
enactment,  is  a  momentous  step,  one,  so  far  as  we  know,  not  taken  in  Greece 
till  after  centuries  of  epic  achievement,  and  then  taken  suddenly,  almost  in 
the  dark,  and  irrevocably.  All  we  really  know  of  this  momentous  step  is 
that  it  was  taken  sometime  in  the  sixth  century  B.C.  and  taken  in  con- 
nection with  the  worship  of  Dionysus.  Surely  it  is  at  least  possible  that 
the  real  impulse  to  the  drama  lay  not  wholly  in  "goat-songs"  and  "circular 
dancing  places"  but  also  in  the  cardinal,  the  essentially  dramatic,  conviction 
of  the  religion  of  Dionysus,  that  the  worshipper  can  not  only  worship,  but 
can  become,  can  be,  his  god.  Athene  and  Zeus  and  Poseidon  have  no  drama, 
because  no  one,  in  his  wildest  moments,  believed  he  could  become  and  be 
Athene  or  Zeus  or  Poseidon.  It  is  indeed  only  in  the  orgiastic  religions  that 
these  splendid  moments  of  conviction  could  come,  and,  for  Greece  at  least, 
only  in  an  orgiastic  religion  did  the  drama  take  its  rise.^ 

Thespis'  invention  of  impersonation  probably  provides  the_ 
clue  for  understanding  the  clash  between  him  and  Solon : 

Thespis  was  already  beginning  to  develop  tragedy,  and  on  account  of 
its  novelty  the  matter  was  engaging  general  attention  but  had  not  yet  been 

'  Cf .  Prolegomena  to  the  Study  of  Greek  Religion^  (1908),  p.  568.  Of  course,  I  do 
not  mean  to  deny  that  impersonation  was  subsequently  borrowed  from  true  drama 
by  rites  of  various  kinds  which  had  not  contained  it  at  first.  This  situation  prob- 
ably obtained  with  reference  to  the  Eleusinian  mysteries  in  their  later  forms. 

The  indebtedness  of  tragedy  to  epic  poetry  for  subject  matter,  dignity  of  treat- 
ment and  of  diction,  and  development  of  plot,  including  such  technical  devices  as 
recognition  (dvaypiipia-is)  and  reversal  of  situation  (irepiir^Teia)  is  too  well  estab- 
lished to  require  argument.  Aeschylus  is  said  to  have  declared  that  his  tragedies 
were  "slices  from  Homer's  bountiful  banquets"  (Athenaeus,  p.  347E).  The  per- 
tinent passages  from  Aristotle's  Poetics  have  been  conveniently  assembled  by 
Throop,  "Epic  and  Dramatic,"  Washington  University  Studies,  V  (1917),  i  ff. 


1 8  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

brought  into  a  public  contest.  Now  Solon,  who  by  nature  was  fond  of 
hearing  and  learning,  to  a  still  greater  extent  in  old  age  gave  himself  up  to 
leisurely  amusement  and  even  to  conviviality  and  music.  Therefore,  he 
went  to  see  Thespis  himself  act,  as  was  customary  for  the  earlier  poets. 
And  when  the  spectacle  was  over,  Solon  addressed  him  and  inquired  if  he 
had  no  sense  of  shame  to  lie  so  egregiously  before  so  many.  Moreover, 
when  Thespis  said  that  it  was  no  crime  to  say  and  enact  such  things  in 
sport,  Solon  struck  the  ground  violently  with  his  staff  and  said:  "Yet  if 
we  praise  and  honor  this  'sport'  under  these  circumstances,  it  will  not  be 
long  before  we  discover  it  in  our  contracts."^ 

To  so  straightforward  a  man  as  Solon  such  a  facile  abandonment 
of  one's  own  personaKty  might  well  seem  like  barefaced  lying, 
and  to  augur  and  even  encourage  similar  shuffling  prevarications 
in  the  more  serious  affairs  of  life. 

To  Ridgeway,  however,  all  this  appears  in  a  different  light. 
In  the  first  place,  after  citing  Diogenes  Laertius  to  the  effect  that 
"in  ancient  times  the  chorus  at  first  carried  on  the  action  in 
tragedy  alone,  but  later  Thespis  invented  an  actor  in  order  to 
allow  the  chorus  intervals  of  relief,"''  he  declares  flatly:  ''But 
this  cannot  mean,  as  is  commonly  held,  that  Thespis  first  sepa- 
rated in  some  degree  the  coryphaeus  from  the  chorus  and  made 
him  interrupt  the  dithyramb  with  epic  recitations,  for,  as  we 
have  seen  above,  before  his  time  the  poet  or  coryphaeus  used  to 
mount  a  table  and  hold  a  dialogue  with  the  chorus."^  In  the 
cross-reference  Ridgeway  had  quoted  Pollux  iv.  123:  "  The  eXeos 
was  a  table  in  the  olden  days  upon  which  in  the  period  before 
Thespis  some  one  mounted  and  made  answer  to  the  choreutae," 
and  Etymologicum  Magnum,  s.v.  "Ovuekr]'' :  "  It  was  a  table  upon 
which  they  stood  and  sang  in  the  country  when  tragedy  had  not 
yet  assumed  definite  form."  These  late  notices  are  manifestly 
vague  and  inexact  references  to  rudimentary  histrionicism  among 
the  choreutae  themselves  or  between  them  and  their  coryphaeus. 

^  Cf.  Plutarch  Solon  xxix.  If  Thespis  treated  the  traditional  myths  with  some 
freedom,  that  may  have  added  to  Solon's  anger. 

^  Cf.  Diogenes  Laertius  iii.  56:  rb  iroKaibv  iv  ttj  rpayipdig.  wpdrepov  fj^v  /j,6vos  6 
Xophs  SteSpa/xdrtfiEf,  vffTepov  8^  G^cTTris  ^va  inroKpiTTjv  i^evpev  virep  rod  diavairaveo'dat 
rbv  xopov. 

3  Cf.  The  Origin  of  Tragedy,  p.  6o. 


INTRODUCTION  19 

The  first  of  them  is  probably  due  to  a  false  inference  from  a 
scene  in  some  comedy.^  It  is  true  that  the  invention  of  the 
first  actor  is  expressly  attributed  to  Thespis  only  by  Diogenes, 
yet  it  may  be  inferred  in  several  other  connections.  Evidently 
the  matter  is  largely  one  of  definition.  Ridgeway  himself  con- 
cedes all  that  is  important,  when  he  continues:  "There  seems 
no  reason  to  doubt  that  Thespis  in  some  way  defined  more 
exactly  the  position  of  the  actor,  especially  by  the  introduction 
of  a  simple  form  of  mask." 

In  the  second  place,  Ridgeway  considers  that  Thespis  made 
the  "grand  step"  in  the  evolution  of  tragedy  when  he 

detached  his  chorus  and  dithyramb  from  some  particular  shrine,  probably 
at  Icaria,  his  native  place,  and  taking  his  company  with  him  on  wagons  gave 
his  performances  on  his  extemporised  stage  when  and  where  he  could  find 
an  audience,  not  for  religious  purposes  but  for  a  pastime.  Thus  not  merely 
by  defining  more  accurately  the  role  of  the  actor  but  also  by  lifting  tragedy 
from  being  a  mere  piece  of  reUgious  ritual  tied  to  a  particular  spot  into  a 
great  form  of  Uterature,  he  was  the  true  founder  of  the  tragic  art.  This  view 
offers  a  reasonable  explanation  of  Solon's  anger  on  first  seeing  Thespis  act. 
A  performance  which  he  would  have  regarded  as  fit  and  proper  when  enacted 
in  some  shrine  of  the  gods  or  at  a  hero's  tomb,  not  unnaturally  roused  his 
indignation  when  the  exhibition  was  merely  "for  sport,"  as  Thespis  himself 
said  (and  doubtless  also  for  profit),  and  not  at  some  hallowed  spot,  but  in 
any  profane  place  where  an  audience  might  conveniently  be  collected  [op. 
cit.,  p.  61]. 

Not  only  does  such  an  interpretation  find  no  support  in  Plutarch's 
anecdote  but  it  is  highly  improbable  as  well.  It  may  be  granted 
that  after  long  neglect  Thespis'  "wagon"^  seems  to  be  enjoying 
a  recrudescence  of  favor.  Dieterich  and  von  Wilamowitz  have 
referred  to  it  in  all  seriousness.^  There  is  nothing  improbable 
about  the  tradition  nor  any  compelling  reason  for  supposing  it 
borrowed  from  the  history  of  early  comedy.  It  is  natural  to 
suppose  that  Thespis  did  not  restrict  his  activities  to  Icaria,  but 

'  Cf.  Hiller,  Rheinisches  Museum  fiir  Philologie,  XXXIX  (1884),  329. 
'  Cf.  Horace  Ars  Poetica,  vs.  276: 

dicitur  et  plaustris  vexisse  poemata  Thespis. 
^  Cf.  Kleine  Schriften,p.  422,  and  Neue  J ahrbiicher  fur  das  klassische  AUertum, 
XXIX  (1912),  474. 


"  11 M"!!*^ 


20  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

extended  them  to  such  other  demes  as  were  interested  or  found 
them  appropriate  to  their  festivals.  In  that  case,  means  of 
transportation  for  performers  and  accessories  became  imperative. 
The  use  of  such  a  vehicle  in  the  Prometheus  Bound  of  Aeschylus 
shows  that  it  need  not  necessarily  have  served  also  as  a  stage, 
as  has  sometimes  been  thought.  Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
several  Attic  vases,  dating  from  the  close  of  the  sixth  century 
B.C.,  represent  the  "wagon-ship"  of  Dionysus  (Fig.  65).  Just 
what  relationship  subsisted  between  primitive  drama  and  the 
scenes  depicted  upon  these  vases  has  yet  to  be  definitely  estab- 
lished. Dr.  Frickenhaus  would  associate  them  with  the  pre- 
liminary procession  at  the  City  Dionysia  (see  p.  121,  below). 
But  at  least,  until  such  time  as  any  connection  with  Thespis' 
wagon  has  been  shown  to  be  impossible,  the  suggestion  can 
scarcely  be  laughed  out  of  court  as  utterly  ridiculous.  On  the 
other  hand,  to  suppose  that  Thespis  entirely  dissociated  his 
performances  from  shrines  and  festivals  not  only  rests  upon  no 
evidence  but  is  so  out  of  harmony  with  other  data  as  to  be 
incredible. 

Whether  the  innovation  of  treating  non-Dionysiac  themes  in 
tragedy  must  also  be  credited  to  Thespis  before  he  brought  his 
career  to  a  close  must  remain  a  matter  of  doubt,  though  person- 
ally I  am  inclined  to  suppose  so,  Siiidas^  reports  Phorhas  or  the 
Prizes  of  Pelias,  Priests,  Youths,  and  Pentheus  as  the  titles  of 
four  of  his  plays.  Of  these  the  last  is  clearly  Dionysiac,  the 
first  probably  is  not,  and  the  other  two  are  noncommittal.  This 
evidence,  however,  cannot  be  relied  upon,  for  the  reason  that 
Aristoxenus  is  said  to  have  declared  that  Heraclides  Ponticus 
wrote  tragedies  and  attributed  them  to  Thespis.^ 

But  as  we  are  not  told  that  these  plays  bore  the  same  titles  as  those 
ascribed  to  Thespis  by  Suidas,  it  does  not  by  any  means  follow  that  the 
latter  are  spurious.  But  even  if  the  titles  were  the  same,  it  is  not  unlikely 
that  Heraclides  would  have  chosen  as  titles  for  his  spurious  compositions 

'  Cf.  Suidas,  s.v.  "Thespis":  /JLvrifioveveTaL  8^  twv  Bpafidruv  avrov  'A^Xa  IleX/oi/ 
^  €>6p/3as,  'lepeis,  'Kldeoi,  UepOevs. 

'  Cf.  Diogenes  Laertius  v.  92.  Both  Aristoxenus  and  Heraclides  were  pupils 
of  Aristotle. 


INTRODUCTION  21 

names  declared  by  tradition  to  be  those  of  genuine  works  of  the  Father 
of  Attic  Tragedy.  The  titles  as  they  have  reached  us  indicate  that  the 
ancients  most  certainly  did  not  believe  that  Thespis  confined  himself  to 
Dionysiac  subjects.^ 

In  any  case,  this  development  could  not  have  been  long 
deferred  after  534  B.C.  To  the  more  conservative  it  is  said  to 
have  given  offense ;  according  to  some  authorities,  the  expression 
"Nothing  to  do  with  Dionysus"  took  its  rise  at  this  juncture.^ 
Simultaneously,  or  at  least  only  a  little  subsequently,  the  tragic 
choreutae  were  no  longer  dressed  to  represent  sileni  but  whatever 
the  needs  of  the  individual  play  demanded,  often  plain  citizens 
of  Athens,  Corinth,  Thebes,  etc. 

Even  after  all  that  Thespis  did  for  it  tragedy  must  still  have 
been  a  crude,  coarse,  only  semi-literary  affair.  Nevertheless,  in 
534  B.C.,  when  Pisistratus,  tyrant  of  Athens,  established  a  new 
festival  called  the  City  Dionysia,  in  honor  of  Dionysus  Eleu- 
thereus,^  he  made  a  contest  in  tragedy  the  chief  feature  of  its 
program.  As  was  but  fitting,  Thespis  won  the  first  goat  prize 
ever  awarded  in  this  Athenian  festival.'*  It  is  unnecessary  to 
enlarge  upon  this  recognition  except  to  protest  against  a  not 
uncommon  tendency  to  assume  that  terms  like  Tpay<^8La  and 
Tpayuidos  were  not  in  use  before  this  date.  Of  course,  the 
matter  can  not  be  definitely  proved,  but  the  evolution  which 
I  have  been  tracing  at  Sicyon  and  Icaria  distinctly  favors  the 
other  view. 

We  have  seen  that  Aristotle's  statements  ought  not  to  be 
ignored  or  lightly  rejected.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  no  less 
important  to  read  nothing  into  his  language  which  does  not 
belong   there.     Thus,    when   he   declares:     "Discarding   short 

"  Cf.  Ridgeway,  op.  cit.,  p.  69. 

*  Cf.  Suidas,  s.v.  oidiv  vpbs  rbv  Ai6vv<tov  (quoted  on  p.  29,  n.  2,  below). 

^  The  cognomen  was  due  to  the  belief  that  the  image  and  cult  were  derived 
from  Eleutherae.  At  Eleutherae  itself,  however,  his  cognomen  would  naturally  be 
different.  There  he  was  known  as  Acdwcros  Me\dvaiyi.s,  "Dionysus  of  the  Black- 
Goat-Skin."  From  this  fact  an  abortive  attempt  has  recently  been  made  to  derive 
a  new  explanation  for  tragic  performances  being  denominated  "goat-songs"; 
cf.  Classical  Philology,  VIII  (1913),  270. 

*  Cf.  M armor  Parium  (quoted  on  p.  14,  n.  2,  above). 


22  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

stories  and  a  ludicrous  diction,  through  its  passing  out  of  its 
satyric  stage,  tragedy  assumed,  though  only  at  a  late  point  in  its 
progress,  a  tone  of  dignity,"^  the  phrase  dia  to  Ik  aaTvpiKov 
IxtTa^oXelv  6\J/e  aireaenvwdr)  has  generally  been  taken  to  mean 
that  tragedy  developed  out  of  a  form  like  the  satyric  dramas 
known  to  us,  in  the  next  century,  from  Sophocles'  Trackers  and 
Euripides'  Cyclops.  For  such  a  historical  development  no  other 
testimony  can  be  cited  until  Byzantine  times  (see  p.  29  and  n.  2, 
below) .  Now  this  interpretation  of  Aristotle's  phrase  has  always 
involved  certain  difficulties  and  has  been  pronounced  inconsistent 
with  his  other  statement  that  tragedy  developed  "from  the 
leaders  of  the  dithyramb."  But  in  my  opinion  we  must  accept 
Reisch's  interpretation:  "We  are  certainly  not  warranted  in 
translating  e/c  (rarvpiKov  baldly  as  'from  the  satyr-play.'  On  the 
contrary,  Aristotle  is  speaking  only  of  the  *satyr-play-like  origin' 
and  of  the  'satyr-like  poetry'  (as  Theodor  Gomperz  suitably 
renders  it  in  his  translation) ;  and  from  this,  first  of  all,  only  a 
family  relationship  between  primitive  tragedy  and  the  satyr- 
play,  not  an  identity,  may  be  inferred."^  The  same  thought 
recurs  in  Aristotle's  next  sentence,  when  he  says:  "The  iambic 
measure  then  replaced  the  trochaic  tetrameter,  which  was 
originally  employed  when  the  poetry  was  of  the  satyric  order,  and 
had  greater  affinities  with  dancing."^  In  other  words,  though 
early  Attic  tragedy  never  received  the  name  of  "satyric  drama," 
and  though  its  choreutae  were  probably  sileni  and  not  satyrs, 
nevertheless,  since  the  Thespian  and  pre-Thespian  performances, 
by  reason  of  their  obscenities,  grotesque  language,  ludicrous  and 

'  Cf.  Poetics  i449ai9  ff.,  Bywater's  translation. 

^  Cf.  op.  cit.,  p.  472.  This  exegesis  has  now  been  commended  by  Pickard- 
Cambridge;  cf.  Classical  Review,  XXVI  (1912),  53.  Cornford  has  expressed  the 
same  view  by  means  of  a  neat  paraphrase:  sk  <ra.TvpLKov  els  <yefj.vhv  fj.eTipaXev,  cf .  The 
Origin  of  Attic  Comedy  (1914),  p.  214,  n.  i.  Gomperz'  translation  (1897)  reads  as 
foUows:  "Was  das  Wachstum  ihrer  Grossartigkeit  anlangt,  so  hat  sich  das  Trauer- 
spiel  im  Gegensatze  zur  urspriinglichen  Kleinheit  der  Fabeln  und  der  zum  Possen- 
haften  neigenden  Artung  der  Diction  ihres  satyrspielartigen  Ursprungs  wegen  erst 

spat  zu  hoherer  Wiirde  erhoben Urspriinglich  hatte  man  sich  namlich,  da 

die  Dichtung  satyrhaft  und  mehr  balletartig  war,  des  trochaischen  Tetrameters 
bedient." 

'  Cf.  Poetics  1449022  f.,  Butcher's  translation. 


INTRODUCTION  23 

• 

undignified  tone,  the  predominance  of  choral  odes,  etc.,  bore  a 
certain  resemblance  to  the  contemporaneous  exhibitions  of 
satyrs  in  the  Peloponnesus  and  to  Pratinas'  satyric  drama  in 
Athens  at  a  later  period,  it  can  truthfully  be  said  that  tragedy 
had  passed  through  a  "satyric  stage"  and  h&d  had  a  "satyric" 
tinge  which  it  was  slow  to  lose. 

What,  then,  was  the  origin  of  the  performance  which  in  the 
fifth  century  constituted  the  final  member  of  tetralogies  ?  Such 
tetralogies   cannot   be   made   out   for   any   playwright   before 

/^...Aeschylus;  and  the  number  of  plays  attributed  to  Pratinas, 
eighteen  tragedies  and  thirty-two  satyric  dramas,  throws 
additional  doubt  upon  the  probability  that  the  early  poets  were 

[required  to  present  four  plays  together.^  We  have  thus  far 
considered  three  types  of  performances:  the  improvisational 
dithyramb,  which  was  still  continued  in  rural  and  primitive 
districts;  the  improved  dithyramb  (in  508  B.C.  dithyrambic 
choruses  of  men  were  added  to  the  program  of  the  City  Dionysia 
at  Athens),  and  tragedy.  The  last  two  had  by  this  time  become 
semi-literary  types.  Now  we  are  expressly  told,  and  there  is  no 
reason  to  discredit  the  information,  that  Pratinas  of  Phliifs  in 
the  Peloponnesus  was  "the  first  to  write  satyr-plays."^  The 
general  situation  is  clear.  After  tragedy  had  lost  its  exclusively 
Bacchic  themes  and  had  considerably  departed  from  its  original 
character,  Pratinas  endeavored  to  satisfy  religious  conservatism 
by  introducing  a  new  manner  of  production,  which  came  to  be 

'  In  467  B.C.  Aristias  concluded  his  tragedies  with  the  Palaestae,  "a  satyric 
drama  of  his  father  Pratinas"  (cf.  arg.  Aesch.  Seven  against  Thebes).  It  is  generally 
supposed  that  this  was  a  posthumous  piece.  But  Professor  Capps  suggests  that 
Pratinas  may  frequently  have  provided  a  satyr-play  for  someone's  else  trilogy, 
and  thus  explains  the  disproportionate  number  of  satyric  dramas  in  Pratinas'  list 
and  of  tragedies  in  other  poets'  lists. 

*  Cf.  Suidas,  ^.z;.  "  Pratinas" :  ....  ^\idcnoi,  TroLrjTTji  rpaycfSiai,  dvTT]ywvl^€To 
Alo'X'i^V  '''*  '^"■^  ^oipCKif),  iwl  TTJs  ep8ofirjKO(TTrjs  OXv/XTriddos,  Kal  wpwTos  eypaxpe 
^arvpovs  ....  Kal  Spdfj,aTa  p.kv  iweBei^aTO  v',  &v  SaTupiKot  X^'.  iviKfjcre  d^  dira^. 
Note  that  the  earhest  name  was  simply  Sdrypot,  "satyrs."  Murray  has  proposed 
ailother  interpretation  of  Suidas'  phrase:  "I  take  this  to  mean  that  Pratinas  was 
the  first  person  to  write  words  for  the  revelling  masquers  to  learn  by  heart.  Thes- 
pis,  like  many  early  Elizabethans,  had  been  content  with  a  general  direction: 
'Enter  Satyrs,  in  revel,  saying  anything'  "  (incorporated  in  Miss  Harrison's  Themis, 
p.  344).     Nevertheless,  he  adds  that  he  "does  not  wish  to  combat"  the  other  view. 


24  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

called  satyric  drama.  This  was  a  combination  of  the  dramatic 
dithyramb  of  his  native  Phlius,  which  of  course  had  developed 
somewhat  since  the  days  of  Arion  and  Epigenes,  and  of  con- 
temporary Attic  tragedy;  and  it  had  the  merit  of  continuing, 
at  least  for  a  while,  the  Dionysiac  subjects  which  were  so  appro- 
priate to  the  god's  festival.  It  appears  that  at  first  satyr-plays 
were  brought  out  independently  of  tragedy  and  in  greater 
numbers,  comparatively,  than  was  afterward  the  case.  But 
about  501  B.C.  the  City  Dionysia  was  reorganized:  the  goat 
prize  was  abandoned;  /ccojuot,  i.e.,  the  volunteer  performances 
from  which  comedy  was  later  to  develop,  were  added  to  the 
program ;  and,  in  particular,  the  regulation  was  established  that 
each  tragic  poet  must  present  three  tragedies  and  one  satyr-play 
in  a  series.  Pratinas  is  known  to  have  competed  against  Aeschy- 
lus about  499  B.C.  His  innovation  doubtless  fell  somewhere 
between  the  institution  of  the  tragic  contest  in  534  B.C.  and  the 
reorganization  of  the  festival  program  in  501  B.C.,  possibly  about 
515  B.C. 

There  remains  the  difficult  problem^  as  to  the  appearance  of 
the  choreutae  in  the  satyric  drama  at  different  periods  in  Athens. 
Fortunately  the  aspect  of  non-dramatic  sileni  and  satyrs  is  fairly 
certain.  Already  on  the  Francois  vase,  a  crater  signed  by 
Clitias  and  Ergotimus  and  belonging  to  about  600-550  B.C., 
there  are  representations  of  three  ithyphallic  creatures  with 
equine  ears,  hoofs,  and  tails  (Fig.  3).^  An  inscription  5IAEN0I 
leaves  no  doubt  as  to  the  identity  of  the  figures.  Mr.  A.  B.  Cook 
fists  six  other  vases  from  Attica  which  bear  the  same  identifying 
inscription.^  None  of  these  seven  vases,  however,  betrays  any 
relationship  to  the  theater. 

On  the  other  hand,  a  list'  of  fifteen  Attic  vases  has  been  drawn 
up  on  which  goat-men  appear.     None  of  these  antedates  450  B.C., 

"  Fig.  3  is  taken  from  Furtwangler  and  Reichhold,  Griechische  Vasenmalarei, 
first  series,  II,  Pis.  i  i-i  2.    The  membrum  virile  has  been  omitted  in  the  reproduction. 

"  Cf.  op.  cit.y  I,  696  f. 

3  This  was  originally  assembled  by  Hartwig  in  Romiscke  Mittheilungen,  XII 
(1897),  89  ff.  and  Wernicke,  op.  cit.  It  is  now  conveniently  summarized  by  Cook, 
op.  cit.,  pp.  697  fE. 


INTRODUCTION 


25 


SO  that  it  is  clear  that  such  figures  did  not  go  back  to  a  remote 
period  in  Athenian  history.  In  fact,  they  can  hardly  be  con- 
ceived of  as  preceding  Pratinas'  introduction  of  the  satyric 
drama  toward  the  close  of  the  sixth  century.  Unfortunately 
none  of  these  vases  is  inscribed  with  the  name  of  the  creatures 
depicted,  but  the  caprine  ears,  hoofs,  horns,  and  tails  scarcely 
leave  room  for  doubt  that  these  creatures,  like  similar  figures  of 
Hellenistic  and  Roman  times,  were  known  as  satyrs.  With  one 
possible  exception  (Fig.  9),  which  will  be  discussed  presently, 


Fig.  4. — Preparations  for  a  Satyric  Drama  from  a  Naples  Crater  of  About 

400  B.C. 

See  p.  25,  n.  i 

these  representations  also  have  no  direct  relationship  to  the 
theater.  It  would  thus  appear  that  from  first  to  last  a  clear 
distinction  was  drawn,  outside  the  sphere  of  theatrical  influence, 
between  the  equine  sileni  and  the  caprine  satyrs. 

Of  the  vases  which  may  certainly  be  regarded  as  representing 
scenes  from  satyric  drama  the  best  known  and  most  pretentious 
is  a  crater  in  Naples  (Fig.  4).^  This  and  a  crater  at  Deepdene 
were  painted  about  400  B.C.  Somewhat  earlier  are  another 
crater  at  Deepdene,  a  dinos  at  Athens  (Figs.  5  and  6),  and  frag- 
ments of  two  dinoi  at  Bonn  (Fig,  7).^    The  last  three  are  derived 

'  Fig.  4  is  taken  from  Baumeister,  Denkmiiler,  Fig.  422.  The  two  craters  at 
Deepdene  are  illustrated  in  Cook,  op.  ciL,  PI.  XXXIX,  Figs.  1-2. 

"The  three  dinoi  are  discussed  by  Miss  Bieber  in  Athenische  Mitteilungen, 
XXXVI  (1911),  269  ff.  and  PI.  XIII,  Figs.  1-3  and  PI.  XIV,  Figs.  1-5.  My  Figs.  5-7 
are  taken  from  her  publication,  corresponding  to  PI.  XIII,  Fig.  i,  PI.  XIV,  Fig.  4, 


26  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

from  the  same  original.  On  the  Naples  crater  preparations  for 
a  satyr-play  are  being  made  in  the  presence  of  Dionysus  and 
Ariadne,  who  are  seen  in  an  affectionate  embrace  in  the  center 
of  the  top  row.  The  names  of  the  figures  are  made  known  by 
inscriptions  in  most  cases  but  are  not  always  significant.  Just 
beyond  Ariadne,  Love  ("I/xepos)  hovers  above  an  uninscribed  actor 
in  women's  costume,  whose  mask  is  provided  with  a  Scythian 
cap.  The  next  figure  is  Heracles  (inscribed)  and  the  next  is 
thought  to  be  Silenus.  Beyond  Dionysus  is  an  uninscribed  actor 
in  royal  costume.  Except  Love,  all  these  figures  carry  masks 
and  constitute  the  histrionic  personages  in  the  drama.  It  has 
been  claimed  with  great  plausibility  that  the  play  dealt  with 
Heracles'  exploits  at  Troy.^  In  that  case  the  king  is  Laomedon 
and  the  maiden  is  Hesione,  his  daughter,  who  was  rescued  from 
the  sea  monster  by  Heracles.  To  the  right  of  the  dancing 
choreutes  in  the  lower  row  is  the  flute-player  (Pronomus),  who 
will  furnish  the  accompaniment  for  the  lyrical  portions  of  the 
play;  to  the  left  is  Demetrius  with  a  roll  in  his  hand,  probably 
the  poet.  The  remaining  twelve  figures  are  probably  choreutae 
and  bear  more  directly  upon  our  present  investigation.  Most  of 
them  carry  masks,  and  they  have  human  feet  and  no  horns. 
They  resemble  sileni  in  having  long  equine  tails.  The  sole 
resemblance  to  satyrs  is  found  in  the  fact  that  nine  of  them  wear 
a  shaggy  covering  about  the  loins,  supposedly  a  goatskin.  The 
waistband  upon  the  choreutes  in  the  extreme  upper  left-hand 
corner,  however,  resembles  cloth  trunks  more  than  a  skin.  Yet 
this  divergence  is  probably  to  be  explained  as  due  to  carelessness 
or  a  whim  on  the  part  of  the  draftsman  instead  of  to  an 
essential  difference  in  material.     This  appears  plainly  from  a 

and  PI.  XrV,  Figs,  i  and  2  respectively.  Cook  maintains  that  all  six  vases  are 
descended  from  a  fresco  by  Polygnotus,  op.  cit.,  pp.  700  f.;  but  this  suggestion 
seems  improbable. 

'  Cf.  De  Prott,  "De  Amphora  Neapolitana  Fabulae  Satyricae  Apparatum 
Scaeniciun  Repraesentante,"  in  Schedae  Philologicae  Hermanno  Usenet  Oblatae 
(Bonn,  1891),  pp.  47  ff.  It  seems  strange  that  De  Prott  should  mar  his  own 
interpretation  by  supposing  the  figure  whom  I  have  called  Hesione  to  be  a  Muse. 
The  Scythian  cap  ought  to  be  decisive. 


Fig.  3. — Caprine  Sileni  unon  the  Francois  Vase,  600-550  B.C. 
See  p    24,  n.  i 


Fig.  5. — View  of  a  Satyr-Play  from  a  Dinos  in  Athens 
See  p.  25,  n.  2 


Fig.  6. — View  of  a  Satyr-Play  from  a  Dinos  in  Athens 

See  p.  25,  n.  2 


Fig.  7. — Views  of  a  Satyr-Play  from  a  Uinos  in  Bonn 
See  p.  25,  n.  2 


INTRODUCTION  27 

study  of  the  other  vases  in  this  series,  on  which  the  loin-bands 
resemble  the  trunks  of  the  last-mentioned  choreutes  on  the 
Naples  crater  rather  than  the  skins  of  his  nine  companions. 
None  the  less,  a  multitude  of  short  dashes  on  the  waistbands  in 
one  of  the  Bonn  dinoi  (Fig.  7)  is  plainly  intended  to  characterize 
them  as  skins,  and  the  bands  on  the  Deepdene  craters  are 
"patterned  in  such  a  way  as  to  suggest  a  fringed  or  shaggy  edge." 
An  illuminating  side  light  upon  the  freedom  which  the  painter 
exercised  is  afforded  by  a  comparison  of  the  left-hand  choreutae 
in  Figs.  6  and  7.  These  are  identical  figures  in  different  copies 
of  the  same  original;  yet  the  shagginess  of  the  loin-band  is 
clearly  indicated  in  the  one  and  entirely  omitted  in  the  other. 
Moreover,  the  choreutes  on  the  other  dinos  at  Bonn  seems  to 
wear  no  waistband  at  all!'  In  conclusion,  it  will  be  observed 
that,  except  for  variations  in  the  representation  of  the  conven- 
tionalized goatskin,  the  choreutae  upon  all  these  vases  are 
exactly  alike  :^  they  all  have  human  feet,  no  horns,  and  equine 
tails.  It  is  evident  that  by  400  B.C.  or  a  little  earlier  this  type 
had  become  standardized  for  theatrical  purposes.  That  it 
suffered  no  material  modification  thereafter  appears  from  a 
Pompeian  mosaic  (Fig.  8).^ 

It  is  plain  that  this  was  the  type  of  satyr  which  the  unknown 
source  of  the  notice  in  Etymologicum  Magnum  had  in  mind  when 
attempting  to  explain  the  etymology  of  t paycjobla:  ".  .  .  .  or 
because  the  choruses  generally  consisted  of  satyrs  whom  they 
called  'goats'  in  jest  either  on  account  of  the  shagginess  of  their 
bodies  or  on  account  of  their  lasciviousness,  for  the  animal  is  of 
such  a  sort;  or  because  the  choreutae  plaited  their  hair,  imitating 

'  Cf.  Miss  Bieber,  op.  ciL,  PI.  XIV,  Fig.  3. 

*  Except  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  choreutae  on  the  Naples  crater  (Fig.  4), 
viz.,  the  figure  with  a  lyre  near  the  middle  of  the  lower  row  and  the  fully  clad  figure 
next  to  the  last  on  the  right.  If  De  Prott  is  correct  in  considering  these  figures 
choreutae,  they  must  be  regarded  (I  suppose)  as  having  not  yet  completed  their 
make-up. 

3  Fig.  8  is  taken  from  Baumeister,  Denkmdler,  Fig.  424.  The  choreutae  in  this 
scene  are  not  to  be  understood  as  having  no  tails;  their  position  does  not  permit 
this  feature  to  be  seen,  cf.  Haigh,  The  Attic  Theatre^,  p.  293,  note. 


28 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


the  form  of  goats.  "^  This  passage  has  been  used  to  support  the 
canonical  doctrine  that  tragedy  was  the  child  of  satyric  drama 
(see  pp.  2  and  22  f.,  above),  but  is  far  from  adequate  for  that 
purpose.  The  words  after  dacxurrjTa  ("  shagginess")  are  often 
ignored  or  even  omitted.     But  it  is  necessary  to  interpret  the 


Fig.  8. — Poet  and  Choreutae  of  a  Satyric  Drama  from  a  Pompeian  Mosaic 

See  p.  27,  n.  3 

final  phrase,  "imitating  the  form  of  goats,"  in  terms  of  the 
details  stated  in  the  context.  So  far  as  we  are  now  concerned, 
the  only  point  of  resemblance  mentioned  is  their  "shagginess." 
This  and  Horace's  expression  about  the  tragic  poet  "stripping 

^  a.  Elymologicum  Magnum,  s.v.  rpayt^dla:  ....  i^Sn  Ta-rroWaoi  xopol  iK 
ffaripwv  avviffTavTO,  oOs  iKdXovv  rpdyovs  (TKdnrrovTes  ^  8ia  ttjv  tov  ffdip-aroi  5a<TVT-r)ra 
^  Std  TTtv  irepl  t4  dcf)poSl(TLa  <nrov5r)v  •  toiovtov  yap  rb  fyov.  fj  6ti  ol  xopevral  rds 
Kdfiai  av^ir\€KOv,  (TxVfia  rpdywv  (M/iovpLevoL. 


INTRODUCTION  29 

his  satyrs"  for  the  satyr-play^  would  be  entirely  suitable  in 
describing  the  choreutae  on  the  Naples  crater.  Furthermore,  it 
will  be  noted  that  this  explanation  occurs  only  in  a  late  Byzantine 
notice  and  that  no  earlier  source  is  mentioned.  The  only  way 
in  which  a  respectable  antiquity  can  be  claimed,  by  means  of 
literary  evidence,  for  this  interpretation  consists  in  maintaining 
that  it  is  implicit  in  Aristotle's  phrase  e'/c  ffaTvpiKov  ixere^aXeu. 
But  we  have  already  seen  (see  p.  22,  above),  that  this  expression 
need  not,  and  probably  does  not,  support  this  view.  The  only 
other  passage  which  can  be  cited  in  this  connection  occurs  in 
three  other  Byzantine  writers.^  The  conclusion  is  irresistible 
that  both  the  goat-men  explanation  of  the  word  rpaycodia  and  the 
supposed  development  of  tragedy  from  satyric  drama  are  due  to 
"reconstructions"  of  literary  history  at  an  extremely  late  period. 
Evidently  this  standard  type  of  theatrical  satyr  took  its 
genesis  from  an  amalgamation  of  the  caprine  satyrs  and  the 
equine  sileni.  It  is  significant  that  in  Euripides'  Cyclops  and 
Sophocles'  Trackers  Silenus  is  one  of  the  characters  and  is  the 
father  of  the  chorus.  These  satyr-plays  were  brought  out  in  the 
vicinity  of  440  B.c.^  The  question  now  arises:  Was  this  con- 
ventional type  the  invention  of  Pratinas  or  did  it  develop  later  ? 
It  will  be  remembered  that  in  the  list  of  fifteen  fifth-century  vases 
from  Attica  on  which  representations  of  goat-men  occur  (see 
p.  25,  above),  one  was  mentioned  as  having  a  possible  connection 

^  Cf.  Horace  Ars  Poetica,  vss.  220  f : 

carmine  qui  tragico  vilem  certavit  ob  hircum, 
mox  etiam  agrestis  Satyros  nudavit,  etc. 

*  Cf.  Suidas  and  Photius,  s.v.  ovSkv  irpbs  rhv  AlSw^ov  and  Apostolius  xiii.  42. 
After  giving  the  explanation  of  this  phrase  already  cited  on  p.  12,  n.  3,  above,  they 
continue:  jS^Xnov  S^  oOtws,  t6  irpdcrdev  els  rhv  At.6vv(rov  ypd<f>ovT€s  tovtols  rjyiovl- 
^ovTo,  direp  Kal  'SarvpiKa  iXiyero-  varepov  8e  fxeTa^dvTes  els  rb  rpayipdlas  ypdcpeiv, 
Kara,  fiiKpbv  els  fj-vOovs  Kal  iffTopias  irpdin^crav,  fjLTjKiTi  toO  Aiovvffov  fiuij/jLOvevovTes, 
6dev  TOVTO  Kal  iir€(p(i)vr]crav.  Kal  Xap.ai\^wv  iv  rip  Tiepl  Q^a-iri8os  rd  irapairXi^ffia 
Icrropei.  The  word  Trapaw\-q<ria  leaves  it  doubtful  for  how  much  of  this  notice 
Chamaeleon  (Aristotle's  pupil)  should  be  held  responsible.  But  at  the  most  his 
accountability  cannot  extend  beyond  explaining  the  introduction  of  non-Dionysiac 
themes;   the  side  remarks  are  Byzantine. 

3  Cf.  von  Wilamowitz,  N.  Jahrbiicher  f.  kl.  Altertum,  XXIX  (1912),  461,  and 
Tanner,  Transactions  American  Philological  Association,  XL VI  (1915),  173  ff. 


30 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


with  the  theater.  The  single  exception  is  a  crater  in  the  British 
Museum  of  about  450  B.C.  (Fig.  9).^  The  upper  design  on  the 
same  side  of  the  vase  represents  the  decking  of  Pandora,  and  it  is 
commonly  thought  that  the  two  scenes  belong  together  and  are 
derived  from  a  satyr-play  deahng  with  Pandora.  However 
that  may  be,  the  presence  of  a  flute-player  would  seem  to  indi- 
cate that  at  least  Fig.  9  is  theatrical.  If  so,  the  choreutae  are 
not  of  the  t)^e  which  we  have  been  studying,  but  true  satyrs 
with  caprine  hoofs,  horns,  and  tails.^  About  their  loins  they 
wear  trunks,  which  in  three  cases  are  painted  black  (to  represent 
a  goatskin?)  but  in  one  case  are  left  unpainted.     Now  from 


Fig.  9. — Satyrs  on  a  British  Museum  Crater  of  About  450  b.c. 
See  p.  30,  n.  i 

Aeschylus'  satyric  drama  entitled  Prometheus  the  Fire-Kindler 
is  preserved  a  line  "O  goat,  you  will  mourn  (lose)  your  beard," 
which  was  addressed  by  Prometheus  to  a  satyr  who  wished  to 
kiss  a  flame  and  which  has  been  used  as  proof  that  the  choreutae 
were  caprine  in  appearance.^  Again,  in  Sophocles'  Trackers 
occur  the  words:  "For  though  you  are  young  with  a  flourishing 

'  Fig.  9  is  taken  from  the  Journal  of  Hellenic  Studies,  XI  (1890),  PI.  XI,  and  is 
reproduced  by  permission  of  the  Council  of  the  Hellenic  Society. 

*  Reisch,  op.  cit.,  pp.  456  f.,  considers  the  goat-men  Pans,  or  choreutae  in  some 
such  comedy  as  Eupolis'  Alyes. 

3  Cf.  Nauck,  Tragicorum  Graecorum  Fragmenla,  p.  69,  fr.  207: 
Tpdyos  yiveiov  apa.  wevd'^o'eis  ffv  ye. 
The  use  of  the  nominative  rpdyos  instead  of  a  vocative  is  harsh,  and  Shorey, 
Classical  Philology,  IV  (1909),  433  ff.,  interprets  the  line  as  an  abbreviated 
comparison  with  ws  omitted:  "  <If  you  kiss  that  fire>,  you'U  be  the  goat  (in  the 
proverb)  who  mourned  his  beard."  Of  course,  this  play  must  have  been  written 
considerably  before  456  b.c,  the  year  of  Aeschylus'  decease. 


INTRODUCTION  3 1 

beard,  you  revel  as  a  goat  in  the  thistles."^  Finally,  in  Eurip- 
ides' Cyclops  the  chorus  speak  of  wandering  about  ''with  this 
poor  goatskin  cloak."^  Although  these  passages  do  not  con- 
stitute proof  that  the  dramatic  satyrs  were  of  caprine  appear- 
ance, they  gain  considerably  in  point  if  we  may  suppose  that 
they  were,  and  to  that  extent  they  confirm  the  evidence  of  the 
British  Museum  crater. 

Such,  then,  is  the  penultimate  stage  in  the  evolution  of  the 
satyric  chorus,  and  many  authorities  are  content  to  stop  here. 
But  there  remains  evidence  for  a  still  earlier  stage.  A  British 
Museum  psykter  by  Duris  (Fig.  lo)^  represents  ten  "choreutae'' 
and  a  herald,  and  a  British  Museum  cylix  by  Brygus  contains  two 
scenes,  in  one  of  which  three  "choreutae"  are  attacking  Iris 
before  Dionysus  and  his  altar  and  in  the  other  Hermes  and 
Heracles  are  protecting  Hera  from  four  "choreutae.""*  These 
vases  belong  to  about  480  B.C.,  and  the  "choreutae"  upon  them 
have  human  feet,  no  horns,  no  loin-bands,  and  equine  ears  and 
tails.  Reisch  is  undoubtedly  correct '  in  recognizing  in  these 
scenes  at  least  the  indirect  influence  of  the  satyr-play.^  Further- 
more, a  similar  figure  appears  upon  a  Wiirzburg  cylix  of  about 
500  B.C.  (Fig.  11).^     This   bears   the  inscription  ^ATPYB^,  a 

'  Cf.  Oxyrhynchus  Papyri,  IX  (1912),  59: 

vios  yap  u)v  dvTjp 
TTuycjvi  ddWwv  us  rpdyos  Kvr)K(^  xXtS^iy. 

'  Cf .  Euripides'  Cyclops,  vss.  79  f . : 

SoCXos  akalvuiv 
ffiiv  Tq,de  rpdyov  xXat';'^  /MeX^g.. 
Reisch  thinks  the  goatskin  characterized  the  chorus  as  shepherds;   cf.  op.  cit., 
p.  458,  note;  Ridgeway  considers  it  "the  meanest  form  of  apparel  that  could  be 
worn  by  a  slave";  cf.  Origin  of  Tragedy,  p.  87. 

3  Fig.  10  is  taken  from  Hober,  Griechische  Vasen,  Fig.  57  (1909). 

*  Cf.  Reinach,  Repertoire  des  Vases  Feints,  I,  193,  or  Baumeister,  Denkmaler, 
Supplementtafel,  Fig.  7. 

s  Cf.  op.  cit.,  p.  459.  The  possibiUty  of  direct  borrowing  had  already  been 
denied  by  Wernicke,  op.  cit.,  pp.  302-6.  Wernicke's  objections  are  not  altogether 
convincing. 

*  Fig.  1 1  is  taken  from  a  photograph  for  which  I  am  indebted  to  Professor 
Heinrich  Bulle.    He  was  also  kind  enough  to  express  the  following  judgment  with 


32  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

manifest  mistake  for  aarvpos.  Here  we  have  the  earliest  repre- 
sentation of  a  satyi  (identified  by  inscription)  in  Attica.  And 
though  it  does  not  belong  to  a  theatrical  scene,  its  divergence 
from  contemporaneous  satyrs  of  the  Peloponnesus  and  from 
Attic  satyrs  of  a  later  period  can  be  explained  only  on  the  basis 
of  the  appearance  of  the  choreutae  in  contemporaneous  satyr- 
plays.  The  Duris  psykter  and  the  Brygus  cylix  show  that  this 
type  did  not  at  once  disappear. 

To  my  mind  the  meaning  of  all  this  is  fairly  clear.  When 
Pratinas  attempted  to  restore  the  Dionysiac  element  to  con- 
temporaneous drama  at  Athene: ,  he  kept  the  Peloponnesian  name 
but  did  not  venture  to  shock  conservatives  still  further  by 
disclosing  to  their  eyes  creatures  so  foreign  and  strange  as  the 
Dorian  goat-men  would  have  been.  Accordingly,  he  transformed 
his  satyrs  so  as  to  approximate  the  sileni  of  native  traged}^^ 
After  fifty  or  sixty  years,  however,  satyric  drama  had  become  so 
thoroughly  at  home  in  Athens  that  the  experiment  was  tried  of 
imposing  the  Peloponnesian  type  unchanged  upon  the  Attic 
choruses.  But  the  reaction  could  not  and  did  not  endure.  In 
two  or  three  decades  the  final  type  had  emerged,  such  as  we  see 
it  in  the  Naples  crater.  Except  for  the  goatskin  about  the 
loins,  which  is  often  highly  conventionalized,  the  native  sileni 
are  at  every  point  victorious. 

The  Greeks  were  inordinately  fond  of  associating  every 
invention  or  new  literary  genre  with  some  one's  name  as  dis- 
coverer (evperris).  In  the  case  of  tragedy  the  problem  was 
unusually  complicated.     In  later  years  Arion,  Epigenes,  and 


regard  to  the  inscription:  "Ich  kann  nicht  mit  Ch.  Frankel,  Satyr-  und  Bakchen- 
namen  atif  Vasenbildern  (1912),  S.  35,  der  Lesung  von  Schulze  {Gottinger  gel. 
Anz.  1896,  S.  254)  $1  BYPTA^  zustimmen;  denn  die  Inschrif t  ist  ja  rechtslaiifig. 
Man  kann  iibrigens  auch  deutlich  an  dem  Kleinerwerden  der  Buchstaben  sehen, 
dass  der  Zeichner  von  links  nach  rechts  geschrieben  hat.  Ich  glaube  mit  Urlichs, 
{Verzeichniss  d.  Antikensammhmg  d.  Univ.  Wiirsburgs,  I,  S.  50),  dass  es  eine 
einfache  Verschreibung  aus  S  ATTPOS  ist."  The  membrum  virile  has  been  omitted 
in  the  reproduction. 

'  Cf.  the  contemporaneous  sileni  in  connection  with  the  "wagon-ship"  of 
Dionysus;  see  Fig.  65  and  p.  121,  below. 


Fig.  II. — A  Satyr  upon  a  Wiirzburg  Cylix  of  About  500  B.C. 
See  p.  31,  n.  6 


Fig.  12. — A  Comus  upon  a  Berlin  Amphora 
See  p.  38,  n.  2 


INTRODUCTION  33 

Thespis  all  had  their  partisans.  The  last  named  is  the  one  most 
frequently  mentioned,  and  strictly  speaking  this  view  is  correct. 
But  more  broadly  considered,  the  question  largely  depends  upon 
the  stage  of  development  to  which  one  is  willing  to  apply  the 
word  "tragedy."  To  many  moderns,  with  almost  two  and  a 
half  millenniums  of  dramatic  history  as  a  background,  Aeschylus 
will  seem  the  first  tragic  playwright.  At  least,  in  his  hands 
tragedy  became  for  the  first  time  real  literature. 

The  foregoing  treatment  will  show  that  I  do  not  believe  a 
study  of  the  origin  of  religion  to  be  indispensable  for  a  discussion 
of  the  origin  of  Greek  tragedy.  Prior  to  Arion  and  Epigenes 
there  was  nothing  which  the  most  fanciful  could  recognize  as 
akin  to  modern  tragedy.  After  the  work  of  Thespis  and  Aeschy- 
lus no  one  can  fail  to  note  its  presence.  To  trace,  so  far  as  we 
may,  the  gradual  unfolding  of  the  new  genre  from  a  state  of 
nonexistence  to  a  period  of  vigorous  growth  seems  to  me  a 
concrete  problem  and  distinctly  worth  while.  The  songs  and 
dances  from  which  tragedy  and  the  satyr-play  developed  were 
associated,  at  the  period  when  they  became  truly  dramatic,  with  the 
worship  of  Dionysus,  and  at  that  same  period  Dionysus  was  as 
truly  a  "g(^d"  (as  distinct  from  a  *'hero")  as  any  that  the  Greeks 
ever  knew.  To  abandon  these  plain  facts  and  others  like  them 
in  favor  of  vague  theorizing  on  religious  origins  will  never  bring 
us  satisfactory  results.  Now,  in  his  Origin  of  Tragedy  Ridgeway, 
who  may  serve  as  a  protagonist  of  this  method,  recognized 
only  the  satyr-play  as  Dionysiac  in  origin,  and  attempted  to 
dissociate  tragedy  and  the  dithyramb  from  that  deity  and  to 
derive  them  from  ceremonies  at  the  tombs  of  heroes,  i.e.,  from 
ancestor  worship.  I  cannot  conceive  that  many  classical  scholars 
will  believe  him  to  have  succeeded  in  this  attempt.  Ridgeway 
evidently  foresaw  this  and  tried  to  forestall  it  by  saying  that 
''as  Dionysus  himself  had  almost  certainly  once  been  only  a 
Thracian  hero,  even  if  it  were  true  that  Tragedy  had  risen  from 
his  cult,  its  real  ultimate  origin  would  still  be  in  the  worship  of 
the  dead"  {op.  cit.,  p.  93).     What,  then,  was  the  point  in  his 


34 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAJVIA 


conceding  that  satyric  drama  was  Dionysiac  in  origin  ?  In  that 
case  the  ultimate  origins  of  tragedy  and  satyric  drama  must, 
after  all,  have  been  identical,  and  the  differences  in  their  origins 
must  have  consisted  only  of  the  minor  divergencies  in  the  final 
stage  of  their  development.  In  practice,  how  does  this  result 
differ  from  the  more  usual  procedure,  which  ignores  the  ultimate 
sources  and  concentrates  attention  upon  the  last  stage  of  develop- 
ment? So  far  as  I  can  see,  it  would  differ  only  to  the  extent 
that  the  underlying  religion  of  both  genres  would  now  be  under- 
stood to  be  ancestor  worship.  But  this  distinction  loses  all 
meaning,  for  the  reason  that  m  his  last  volume  Ridgeway  main- 
tains that  ''Vegetation,  Corn,  and  Tree  spirits,  as  well  as  those 
of  rocks,  mountains,  and  rivers,  and  what  are  collectively  termed 
Totemistic  beliefs,"  fertility-rites,  initiation-rites,  mana,  "the 
worship  of  Demeter  and  almost^  all  other  Greek  deities"  are 
"not  primary  phenomena  but  merely  secondary  and  dependent 
on  the  primary  belief  in  the  immortality  and  durability  of  the 
soul,"  and  consequently  that  tragedy  and  serious  drama  (being 
everywhere  associated  with  some  form  of  religion)  not  only  in 
Greece  but  "wherever  they  are  found  under  the  sun  have  their 
roots  in  the  world-wide  belief  in  the  continued  existence  of  the 
soul  after  the  death  of  the  body."^  How  much  of  truth  there 
•Inay  be  in  Ridgeway's  contention  that  ancestor  worship  is  prior 
to  and  the  ultimate  source  of  other  forms  of  religion  I  shall  not 
stop  to  discuss.  But  the  practical  value  of  so  universal  a  general- 
ization has  been  well  expressed  by  another:  "Even  if  it  can  be 
shown  that  your  far-off  ancestor  was  an  ape,  it  does  not  follow 
that  your  father  was  an  ape."^  In  other  words,  in  spite  of  any 
resemblance  which  may  have  obtained  between  the  ultimate 
forms  of  Dionysiac  worship  and  the  true  veneration  of  heroes,  at 
the  time  when  tragedy  actually  came  into  being  the  existing  differ- 

'  Why  "almost"  is  inserted  here  does  not  appear.  Many  Greek  divinities  are 
mentioned  on  Ridgeway's  pages,  but  none  is  recognized  as  "totally  independent" 
of  the  cult  of  the  dead. 

'  Cf.  his  Dramas  and  Dramatic  Dances,  etc.,  pp.  63,  337,  385,  and  passim. 
3  Cf.  Marrett,  Classical  Review,  XXX  (1916),  159. 


INTRODUCTION  35 

ences  between  them  were  of  much  greater  significance  than  any- 
alleged  identity  of  origin  in  the  far-distant  past  could  have  been. 
If  it  were  possible  for  Ridgeway  to  substantiate  his  first  position, 
viz.,  that  tragedy  arose  directly  from  the  worship  of  the  hero 
Adrastus  at  Sicyon,  or  the  like,  there  would  be  some  meaning  in 
his  work.  But  his  doctrine  of  ultimate  derivation  loses  itself  in 
primeval  darkness. 


The  Origin  of  Comedy.^— -The  difficulty  of  this  problem  was 
recognized  as  early  as  Aristotle: 

Now  the  successive  changes  in  tragedy  and  the  persons  who  were 
instrumental  thereto  have  not  passed  into  oblivion,  but  comedy  did  suffer 
oblivion  for  the  reason  that  it  was  not  at  first  taken  seriously.  And  a  proof 
of  this  is  found  in  the  fact  that  it  was  relatively  late  [viz.,  486  B.C.]  before 
the  archon  granted  a  chorus  of  comic  performers;  they  used  to  be  volunteers. 
And  comedy  already  had  certain  forms  when  the  aforementioned  comic 
poets  [i.e.,  Chionides  and  Magnes,  the  first  comedians  after  oflScial  recogni- 
tion was  granted]  appear  in  the  records.  Who  furnished  it  with  "char- 
acters" {TrpoawTray  or  prologues  or  number  of  actors  and  the  like  remains 
unknown.  Developing  a  regular  plot  was  a  Sicilian  invention,  but  of  the 
Athenians  the  first  to  abandon  the  "iambic"  or  lampooning  form  and  to 
begin  to  fashion  comprehensive  themes  and  plots  was  Crates.^       » 

'  Cf .  Zielinski,  Die  Glicderung  der  altattischen  Komodie  (1885);  Humphreys, 
"The  Agon  of  the  Old  Comedy,"  American  Journal  of  Philology,  VIII  (1887), 
179  ff.;  Poppelreuter,  De  Comoediae  Atticae  Primordiis  (1893);  A.  Korte,  "  Archao- 
logische  Studien  zur  alten  Komodie,"  Jahrhuch  d.  archaologischen  Instituts,  VIII 
(1893),  61  ff.;  Loeschcke,  Athenische  Mittheilungen,  XIX  (1894),  518,  note;  Bethe, 
Prolegomena  zur  Geschichte  des  Theaters  im  AUerthiim  (1896),  pp.  48  ff.;  Mazoli, 
Essai  sur  la  Composition  dcs  Comedies  d'  Aristophane  (1904);  Capps,  "The  Intro- 
duction of  Comedy  into  the  City  Dionysia,"  University  of  Chicago  Decennial 
Publications,  VI  (1904),  266  ff.,  and  in  Colimibia  University  lectures  on  Greek 
Literature  (1912),  pp.  124  ff.;  Navarre,  "Les  origines  et  la  structure  technique  de 
la  com6die  ancienne,"  Revue  des  Etudes  anciennes,  XIII  (191 1),  245  ff.;  White, 
The  Verse  of  Greek  Comedy  (191 2);  Cornford,  The  Origin  of  Attic  Comedy  (1914), 
reviewed  by  Flickinger  in  Classical  Weekly,  VIII  (1915),  221  ff.;  and  Ridgeway, 
The  Dramas  and  Dramatic  Dances  of  Non-European  Races  with  an  Appetidix  on  the 
Origin  of  Greek  Comedy  (19 15),  reviewed  by  FUckinger,  Classical  Weekly,  XI 
(1918),  109  f. 

'  I  am  indebted  to  Professor  Capps  for  this  translation;  the  word  is  generally 
taken  to  mean  "masks"  here. 

i  Cf.  Aristotle's  Poetics  l^()a^,^-b(). 


36  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

But  whatever  uncertainties  may  obscure  the  various  stages 
in  the  history  of  comedy,  fortunately  there  is  little  doubt  as  to 
the  source  from  which  it  came.  Aristotle  states  that  "comedy 
also  sprang  from  improvisations,  originating  with  the  leaders  of 
the  phallic  ceremonies,"  which  still  survive  as  institutions  in 
many  of  our  cities.""  Mr.  Cornford  {op.  ciL,  pp.  syfif.)  finds 
the  best  illustration  of  these  ceremonies  in  the  well-known 
passage  in  Aristophanes'  Acharnians,  vss.  237  ff.  Dicaeopolis 
has  just  concluded  a  private  peace  with  Sparta  and  prepares  to 
celebrate  a  festival  of  Dionysus  on  his  country  estate.  He 
marshals  his  meager  procession  as  if  it  contained  a  multitude, 
his  daughter  carries  upon  her  head  a  sacred  basket  with  the 
implements  of  sacrifice,  two  slaves  hold  aloft  a  pole  which  is 
surmounted  by  the  phallic  symbol,  and  Dicaeopolis  himself 
brings  up  the  rear  with  a  large  pot  in  his  arms,  while  the  wife 
and  mother  constitutes  the  watching  throng.  At  vss.  246  ff.  a 
sacrifice  is  offered  to  the  accompaniment  of  an  invocation  to 
Dionysus.  Finally  Dicaeopolis  re-forms  his  procession  with 
various  coarse  remarks  and  starts  up  a  phalHc  ballad  of  an 
obscene  nature  in  honor  of  Phales,  "mate  of  Dionysus  and  fellow- 
reveller"  {^vyKOijxe).  The  proceedings  thus  consist  of  a  proces- 
sion to  the  place  of  sacrifice,  the  sacrifice  itself,  and  the  phallic 
song  or  comus  (kco/xos).  The  last  is  important  for  our  present 
purpose  because  comedy  (/ccojuwSta)  etymologically  means  "  comus- 
song"  (/cw/xos-f-wSiy).  KCofxos  denotes  both  a  revel  and  the  band  of 
masqueraders  participating  therein.  The  comus  was  the  particu- 
lar type  of  phallic  ceremony  from  which  comedy  developed. 

The  comus  in  Aristophanes'  Acharnians  is  sung  by  Dicaeopolis 
alone  for  the  reason  that  the  lack  of  suitable  helpers  compelled 
him  to  act  as  both  priest  and  congregation.  But  Cornford  is 
right  {op.  cit.,  pp.  38  ff.)  in  recognizing  this  song  as  belonging  to  a 
widely  spread  type  in  which  the  improvisations  of  one  or  more 
leaders  {e^apxoprei)  are  interrupted  at  more  or  less  regular 
intervals  by  a  recurrent  chantey  on  the  part  of  the  chorus.     In 

'  The  phallus  was  a  representation  of  the  membrum  virile,  and  such  ceremonies 
were  primarily  intended  to  secure  fertility. 
'  Cf.  Aristotle's  Poetics  144909-13. 


INTRODUCTION  37 

this  instance  the  song  is  not  continued  to  a  length  natural  to  the 
type,  but  is  cut  short  by  the  real  chorus  of  the  play  which  has 
been  hiding  but  now  bursts  forth  and  stops  proceedings  with  a 
shower  of  stones.  From  the  standpoint  of  contents  Cornford 
detects  two  elements  in  the  comus :  an  invocation  to  the  god  to 
attend  his  worshipers  in  their  rites,  and  an  improvisational 
"iambic"  element  of  obscene  ribaldry,  which  often  took  the  form 
of  satire  directed  against  individuals  by  name  {ibid.,  p,  41). 
These  two  elements  exactly  correspond  to  the  double  object  of 
all  phallic  ceremonies,  which  were  both  a  "positive  agent  of 
fertilization"  and  a  "negative  charm  against  evil  spirits."  The 
former  result  was  obtained  by  the  invocation  of  friendly  powers; 
as  to  the  latter, 

the  simplest  of  all  methods  of  expelling  such  malign  influences  of  any  kind 
is  to  abuse  them  with  the  most  violent  language.  No  distinction  is  drawn 
between  this  and  the  custom  of  abusing,  and  even  beating,  the  persons  or 
things  which  are  to  be  rid  of  them,  as  a  carpet  is  beaten  for  no  fault  of  its 

own,  but  to  get  the  dust  out  of  it There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 

element  of  invective  and  personal  satire  which  distinguishes  the  Old  Comedy 
is  directly  descended  from  the  magical  abuse  of  the  phallic  procession,  just 
as  its  obscenity  is  due  to  the  sexual  magic;  and  it  is  likely  that  this  ritual 
justification  was  well  known  to  an  audience  f  amiUar  with  the  phallic  cere- 
mony itself  [ibid.,  pp.  49  f.]. 

It  is  possible  to  cite  many  examples  of  ritualistic  scurrihty 
among  the  Greeks,  such  as  that  indulged  in  by  the  Eleusinian 
procession  as  it  approached  "  the  bridge,"  that  of  the  riders  upon 
the  carts  on  the  Day  of  Pots  (xoes)  at  the  Anthesteria,  that  at  the 
Stenia  festival,  and  many  others.  Sometimes  these  involved 
physical  violence  as  well  as  mere  abuse,  and  this  element  (or  the 
threat  of  it)  frequently  recurs  in  Old  Comedy.  Perhaps  the 
most  interesting  parallel  is  afforded  by  Herodotus  v.  82  f.  In 
the  sixth  century  B.C.,  in  order  to  avert  a  famine,  the  Epidaurians 
set  up  wooden  statues  of  Damia  and  Auxesia,  goddesses  of 
fertiHty.^    Somewhat  later,  the  Aeginetans  stole  these  images 

'  The  second  is,  of  course,  the  personification  of  Increase;  the  first  is  not  so 
obvious.  Some  connect  it  with  Demeter;  it  has  also  been  proposed  to  interpret  it 
as  the  Cretan  form  of  f^yM^a,  "damage."  The  one  would  therefore  represent  the 
productive  and  the  other  the  destructive  powers;  cf.  Macau's  edition  ad  loc. 
This  would  accord  very  neatly  with  Cornford's  positive  and  negative  charms. 


47808 


38  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

and  set  them  up  in  their  own  country;  "they  used  to  appease 
them  with  sacrifices  and  female  satiric  choruses,  appointing  ten 
men  to  furnish  the  choruses  for  each  goddess;  the  choruses 
abused  no  man  but  only  the  women  of  the  country;  the 
Epidaurians  also  had  the  same  rites." 

The  comus  frequently  took  the  form  of  a  company  marching  \ 
from  house  to  house  to  the  music  of  a  flute-player  and  rendering 
a  program  of  singing  and  dancing  at  every  dwelling.  From  what 
has  already  been  said  it  will  be  understood  that  the  improvisa- 
tions of  the  comus  leaders  would  rarely  redound  to  the  credit  of 
the  householders.  These  scurrilous  attacks  upon  their  neighbors 
combined  with  other  motives  to  induce  the  comus  revelers  to 
assume  disguises,  which  varied  from  year  to  year.  Now, 
according  to  the  Parian  Chronicle,  comic  choruses  were  the  inven- 
tion of  Susarion  and  were  fijst  performed  at  Icaria.  This 
doubtless  means  that  Susarion  transformed  the  ceremonies  of  an 
old  ritual  procession  in  the  country  into  a  "stationary"  perform- 
ance in  an  orchestra.  The  same  authority  informs  us  that  this 
innovation  was  introduced  into  Athens  between  580  and  560  b.c.^ 
This  notice  must  refer  to  the  Lenaean  festival,  since  the  program 
of  the  City  Dionysia  did  not  receive  this  addition  until  about 
501  B.C.  At  both  festivals  the  performances  still  continued  for 
some  time  to  be  called  comuses  (kco)uoi)  ,  comedy  being  a  name  of 
later  date,  and  were  produced  by  "  volunteers."  Five  Attic  vase 
paintings  of  ca.  540-490  B.C.  depict  comus  revelers  as  cocks,  birds, 
or  as  riding  upon  horses,  dolphins,  or  ostriches  (Figs.  12-16).^ 
The  state  did  not  assume  official  supervision  of  comedy  until 
486  B.C.  at  the  City  Dionysia  and  about  442  B.C.  at  the  Lenaea.^ 

'  Cf.  Jacoby,  Das  Marmor  Parium,  p.  13:  a^'  oO  iv  'A^[i}j']ais  KcofMix[i.8wv 
Xo]p[bs  iT]40r)^  [a-T7j](Tdv[TU)P  irpd^rwv'lKapiicav,  evpSvTos  "Zovaapldivos,  kolI  q-ffKov  ir^drf 
TrpwTov  la-xdSwlv]  dpffixols]  Kalotvov  /j.e[r]p7}Tifis,  [err]  ....  The  exact  date  is  not 
determinable  but  is  limited  to  a  period  of  twenty  years  by  other  entries  just  before 
and  after  this  one. 

'  Figs.  12  and  13  are  taken,  by  permission  of  the  Council  of  the  Hellenic  Society, 
from  the  Journal  of  Hellenic  Studies,  II  (1881),  PI.  XIV,  Ai  and  Bi;  Fig.  14  from 
Poppelreuter,  op.  cii.,  p.  8;  and  Figs.  15  and  16  from  Robinson,  Boston  Museum 
Catalogue  of  Greek,  Etruscan,  and  Roman  Vases  (1893),  P-  136- 

^  Cf.  Capps,  University  of  Chicago  Decennial  Publications,  VI,  286,  and  American 
Journal  of  Philology,  XXVIII  (1907),  186  f. 


INTRODUCTION 


39 


Before  we  can  proceed  further,  it  will  be  necessary  to  con- 
sider the  nature  of  ancient  comedy.  In  the  time  of  Hadrian 
the  history  of  literary  comedy  at  Athens  was  divided  into  three 
periods,  called  Old,  Middle,  and  New  Comedy,  respectively. 
Old  Comedy  came  to  a  close  shortly  after  the  beginning  of  the 
fourth  century  B.C.  Pohtics  and  scurrilous  attacks  upon 
contemporaneous  personages  made  up  the  bulk  of  its  subject- 
matter.    Living  men,  such  as  Pericles,  Socrates,  Euripides,  and 


Fig.  14. — A  Comus  upon  a  Berlin  Amphora 
See  p.  38,  n.  2 


Cleon  were  represented  by  actors  on  the  stage  and  were  lam- 
pooned with  the  utmost  virulence.  Sometimes  their  identity 
was  thinly  disguised  under  a  transparent  pseudonym,  but 
oftentimes  the  very  name  of  the  victim  was  retained  along  with 
the  other  marks  of  identification.  Middle  Comedy  was  a 
transitional  period  of  about  half  a  century's  duration  between 
Old  and  New.  It  renounced  the  political  and  personal  themes 
of  its  forerunner  and  was  largely  given  up  to  literary  criticism, 
parodies,  and  mythological  travesty.  New  Comedy,  in  turn, 
abandoned  such  subjects  for  the  most  part  and  devoted  itself 
to  motives  drawn  from  everyday  life.    Except  for  the  occasional 


40 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


presence  of  the  chorus,  it  does  not  greatly  differ  in  structure, 
theme,  or  technique  from  the  comedy  of  manners  today, 
mutatis  mutandis. 

For  the  study  of  origins,  however,  we  must  turn  back  to  the 
earhest  type,  Old  Comedy,  which  is  entirely  unlike  any  present- 
day  genre.  We  are  fortunate  in  possessing  eleven  complete 
plays  of  Aristophanes,  the  chief  poet  of  Old  Comedy;  and 
though  no  two  of  them  are  exactly  alike  in  the  details  of  their 


Fig.  is 


Fig.  i6 
V 

Figs.  15-16. — Comus  Scenes  upon  a  Boston  Skjrphos 

See  p.  38,  n.  2 

structure,  yet  the  general  outline  is  clear.     The  leading  features 
are  as  follows  ■} 

1 .  The  prologue  (irpoXoyos)  spoken  by  the  actors  and  serving 
both  as  an  exposition  and  to  set  the  action  of  the  play  in  motion. 

2.  The  parodus  (TrdpoSos),  or  entrance  song  of  the  chorus. 
Originally  this  division  must  have  been  exclusively  choral,  but 
by  Aristophanes'  time  it  has  been  developed  so  as  -sometimes  to 
include  lines  spoken  by  actors. 

'  The  divisions  of  tragedy  are  discussed  on  pp.  192  f.,  below.  Five  of  the  terms 
applied  to  the  divisions  of  comedy  appear  also  in  tragedy,  viz.,  prologue,  parodus, 
episode,  stasimum,  and  exodus;  several,  if  not  all,  of  the  five  seem  to  have  originated 
in  tragedy. 


INTRODUCTION  41 

3.  The  agon  {aycjv,  "contest"),  a  "dramatized  debate"  or 
verbal  duel  between  two  actors,  each  supported  by  a  semi- 
chorus;  see  p.  43,  below. 

4.  The  parahasis  (from  irapa^alvo),  to  "come  forward"),  a 
"choral  agon"  in  which  the  chorus,  the  actors  being  off  stage, 
march  forward  to  address  the  audience.  When  complete,  the 
parabasis  consists  of  seven  parts  which  fall  into  two  groups: 
the  first  group  contains  three  single  parts,  which  were  probably 
rendered  by  the  first  coryphaeus.  Dropping  all  dramatic 
illusion  and  all  connection  with  the  preceding  events  of  the  play, 
he  sets  forth  the  poet's  views  concerning  his  own  merits  and 
claims  upon  the  public,  ridicules  the  rival  playwrights,  announces 
his  opinions  on  civic  questions,  etc.  The  second  group  contains 
four  parts  in  the  form  of  an  epirrhematic  syzygy,  i.e.,  a  song 
{(hbrj)  and  epirrheme  {iTripprjixa,  "speech")  by  one  semi-chorus 
and  its  leader,  respectively,  -are  counterbalanced  by  an  antode 
{avT(jobri)  and  an  antepirrheme  (di'TeiripprjiJia)  by  the  other  semi- 
chorus  and  its  leader;  here  the  chorus  usually  sing  in  character 
once  more,  the  knights  praising  their  "horses,"  the  birds  their 
manner  of  hfe  as  compared  with  men's,  etc.^ 

5.  There  follows  a  series  of  episodes  (e7rei(r65ta),  histrionic 
scenes  separated  (6)  by  brief  choral  odes  (aTaa-Lfxa  or  xopt/cd). 
The  episodes  portray  the  consequences  of  the  victory  won  in  the 
agon  (3).  For  example,  in  the  Acharnians  the  subject  of  con- 
troversy is  whether  DicaeopoHs  shall  be  punished  for  the  alleged 
treason  of  having  made  a  pilivate  peace  with  Sparta,  and  part 
(5)  represents  him,  in  a  succession  of  burlesque  scenes,  as  enjoying 
the  fruits  of  that  peace. 

7.  The  exodus  (e^oSos),  or  recessional  of  the  chorus.  Prop- 
erly speaking,  this  should  contain  only  the  final,  retiring  song 

'  From  this  second  half  of  the  parabasis  comedy  developed  another  epir- 
rhematic di\'ision  to  which  Zielinski  also  gave  the  name  of  syzygy.  This  was  not 
exclusively  choral,  however,  stood  at  no  definite  point  in  the  play,  and  differed  in 
still  other  respects  from  the  epirrhematic  syzygy  of  the  parabasis.  Three  syzygies 
appear  in  Aristophanes'  Acharnians  and  Birds,  none  in  his  Lysistrata,  Women  in 
Council,  and  Pliitus.  Cf.  White,  op.  cit.,  §  677.  Since  it  is  apparent  that  such 
syzygies  are  not  primary  in  origin,  they  have  been  ignored  in  the  foregoing 
discussion. 


42  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

of  the  chorus  (the  l^bhov),  but  the  term  came  to  include  the 
histrionic  passage  just  preceding  it,  also. 

This  is  a  very  incomplete  sketch  of  a  highly  complicated 
subject,  but  it  will  suflSce  for  present  purposes. 

Now  in  the  scurrility  of  the  primitive  (non-literary)  comus 
Professor  Navarre  {op.  cit.,  p.  248)  would  recognize  three  stages. 
^^  In  the  first,  the  ribaldry  of  the  comus  received  no  answer  from 
the  crowd  of  spectators.  This  is  doubtless  to  be  explained  by 
supposing  that  all  who  were  competent  to  participate  were 
already  members  of  the  comus;  the  spectators  consisted  only 
of  women  and  children,  who  fiequently  had  no  more  right  of 
speech  in  rehgious  ritual  than  in  law.  So  DicaeopoUs'  wife  is 
present  but  speechless  in  Aristophanes'  Acharnians  (see  p.  36, 
J.,  above).  In  the  second  stage,  the  bystanders  retorted  to  the 
assaults  of  the  comus  revelers.  This  probably  indicates  that 
membership  in  the  comus  has  been  restricted  in  some  way, 
leaving  others  free  to  retaliate  in  kind  from  the  crowd.  The 
third  stage  was  reached  when  this  new  element  was  formally 
/-  recognized  and  brought  within  the  comus  itseh,  which  was  thus 
divided  into  antagonistic  halves  for  mutual  recrimination. 
Thus  may  be  explained  a  peculiar  feature  of  Old  Comedy.  Its 
chorus  was  a  double  chorus  of  twenty-four  members,  always 
divided  into  two  semi-choruses,  which  often  were  hostile  during 
a  large  portion  of  the  play.  Sometimes  this  division  between 
them  was  shown  by  their  masks  or  costumes,  as  when  the  chorus 
represented  men  and  women,  horses  and  their  riders,  etc.  But 
sometimes  the  division  was  one  of  sentiment — one  semi-chorus, 
for  example,  favoring  peace  and  the  other  being  opposed  to  it. 
The  result  of  this  division  of  the  early  comus  revelers  into  semi- 
choruses  is  a  parallelism  of  structure  in  certain  parts  of  comedy, 
ode  being  matched  by  antode,  and  the  epirrheme  of  one  chorus 
leader  by  the  antepirrheme  of  the  other.  It  is  clear  that  all  the 
divisions  which  show  this  duahty  of  arrangement  descend  from 
the  comus.'' 

One  of  these  divisions  is  the  parabasis  (4).  Though  one  of 
the  most  ancient  features  of  Old  Comedy,  it  was  also  one  of  the 

'  Or  at  least  reflect  its  influence;  cf.  the  syzygies  mentioned  in  the  last  note. 


INTRODUCTION  43 

first  to  decay:  complete  in  Aristophanes'  earlier  plays,  it  is 
always  mutilated  in  some  way  during  his  middle  period  and  in 
his  last  two  comedies  has  disappeared  entirely.  We  have  seen 
(p.  37,  above)  that  the  essential  characteristics  of  the  phallic 
ceremonies  were  the  induction  of  the  good  influences  by  invoca- 
tion and  the  aversion  of  the  bad  by  vituperation.  Now  in  the 
epirrhematic  syzygy  which  constituted  the  second  half  of  the 
parabasis,  even  as  late  as  Aristophanes,  when  it  naturally  must 
have  changed  considerably  in  function,  "the  ode  and  antode 
normally  contain  an  invocation,  either  of  a  muse  or  of  gods,  who 
are  invited  to  be  present  at  the  dance,  the  divine  personages 
being  always  selected  with  reference  to  the  character  of  the 
chorus.  The  epirrheme  and  antepirrheme  often  contain  the 
other  element  of  satire  or  some  milder  form  of  advice  and 
exhortation."^ 

Another  division  of  Old  Comedy  which  was  carefully  balanced 
and  which  ought,  therefore,  to  be  a  derivative  of  the  comus  is  the 
agon  (3).  Normally  this  division  was  epirrhematic  in  structure 
and  fell  into  nine  parts,  as  follows:  First  comes  the  ode  sung  by 
one  half-chorus,  then  the  cataceleusmus  {KaTaKe\ev<Tn6s,  "encour- 
agement") in  which  their  leader  exhorts  one  of  the  actor  con- 
testants, thirdly  this  actor  delivers  his  speech  (epirrheme), 
concluding  with  a  peroration  (rvlyos,  "choke,"  so  called  because 
it  was  all  to  be  delivered  in  one  breath  and  left  the  performer 
speechless).  Next  came  the  antode,  anticataceleusmus,  ant- 
epirrheme, and  antipnigus  rendered  by  the  other  half-chorus, 
their  leader,  and  the  second  actor,  respectively.  Finally,  in 
the  sphragis  {a^ypayis,  "seal")  is  given  the  unanimous  verdict  of 
the  whole  chorus.  At  fijst  glance  it  would  seem  that  too 
important  a  role  is  here  played  by  actors  for  the  agon  ever  to 
have  been  derived  from  the  comus,  which  was  purely  choral. 
The  comus  consisted  of  an  undifferentiated  band  of  revelers 
and  its  choreutae  assumed  no  distinct  parts.  In  fact,  there  is  no 
reason  to  suppose  that  their  performances  involved  dramatic 
impersonation  (/xt/xTjo-ts)  at  all.  They  might  be  dressed  to 
represent  birds  or  animals,  but  with  few  or  no  exceptions  they 

^  Cf.  Comford,  op.  cit.,  p.  46. 


44  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

sang  and  spoke  and  conducted  themselves  as  would  be  appro- 
priate for  men  engaged  in  such  a  rite  to  do.  As  we  have  already 
seen  (p.  38,  above)  their  costumes  were  for  disguise. 

Nevertheless,  the  situation  is  not  so  impossible  as  it  seems. 
The  fact  that  the  masks  and  costumes  of  the  choreutae  were  all 
alike,  or  at  most  of  two  types  to  correspond  to  the  two  semi- 
choruses,  did  not  prevent  each  member  of  the  chorus  from 
speaking,  or  singing,  apart  from  the  rest.  This  was  sometimes 
done  even  in  fully  developed  tragedy,  where  the  line  of  distinction 
between  chorus  and  actors  was  usually  a  sharp  one.  Thus,  in 
Aeschylus'  Agamemnon,  vss.  1348  ff.,  each  of  the  choreutae  in 
turn  pronounces  two  iambic  lines.  In  particular,  the  roles  of 
the  two  chorus  leaders  must  have  been  developed  in  the  comus 
and  early  comedy  so  as  partly  to  compensate  for  the  lack  of 
actors.  Note  that  Aristotle  does  not  state  merely  that  comedy 
sprang  from  phallic  ceremonies  but  from  the  leaders  (e^apxovres) 
of  the  phallic  ceremonies.  An  illustration  of  what  may  result 
from  participation  in  the  action  on  the  part  of  individual  cho- 
reutae is  afforded  by  Aristophanes'  Women  in  Council.  I  believe 
that  the  "First  Woman"  and  the  ''Second  Woman"  who  appear 
in  our  editions  as  uttering  brief  remarks  at  the  beginning  of  this 
play  are  not  actors  but  the  leaders  of  the  two  half-choruses.^ 
In  function  they  are  not  at  first  distinguishable  from  Praxagora. 
Indeed,  it  does  not  transpire  until  later  that  Praxagora  herself 
is  an  actor,  not  the  coryphaeus.  The  fact  is  that  in  all  his 
plays  Aristophanes  seems  to  have  assigned  his  two  chorus  leaders 
more  extensive  participation  both  in  lyrics  and  in  recitative  than 
has  been  generally  recognized  (cf.  White,  op.  ciL,  passim).  In 
my  opinion  this  sort  of  thing  was  even  more  common  at  an 
earlier  period,  and  in  this  way  it  was  possible  for  the  comus 
to  have  a  quasi-agon  from  which  the  later  histrionic  agon  could 
easily  develop.  Of  course,  the  chorus  leaders  could  not  appear 
in  individualized  roles,  as  the  actors  did  in  the  Aristophanic 
a,gon,  for  characters  had  not  yet  been  introduced  into  comedy; 

'  Cf .  White,  "An  Unrecognized  Actor  in  Greek  Comedy,"  Harvard  Studies, 
XVII  (1906),  124  f. 


INTRODUCTION  45 

but  they  could  engage  in  a  contest  of  perfectly  general,  deperson- 
alized billingsgate  or,  at  a  later  period,  speak  as  the  poet's 
mouthpiece  for  the  pros  or  cons  of  any  question.  Thus,  they 
would  not  represent  individual  men,  with  an  individual's  name 
and  characterization,  but  any  men.  Their  sentiments  would 
have  been  equally  appropriate  in  the  mouths  of  any  of  the  other 
choreutae. 

The  agon  and  parabasis  must  necessarily  have  been  flanked 
on  either  side  by  a  processional  and  a  recessional.  In  their 
simplest  form,  these  need  not  have  involved  more  than  silent 
marching  in  and  out  again;  but  probably  the  flute  accompani- 
ment was  always  present,  and  singing  would  soon  be  added. 
Even  when  words  and  singing  were  employed,  there  was  no 
necessity  of  these  being  newly  composed  for  each  occasion  or 
even  original  at  all.  It  will  be  remembered  that  in  Aristophanes' 
earliest  and  latest  plays  he  did  not  write  special  exodia  but  bor- 
rowed from  earher  poets  any  popular  airs  that  suited  his  purpose.' 
Moreover,  Aristophanes'  exodi  lack  the  balanced  structure  which 
is  characteristic  of  all  divisions  which  descend  directly  from 
the  primitive  comus;  but  in  this  instance  that  fact  has  no  sig- 
nificance, for  the  reason  that  by  the  end  of  a  comedy  (or  comus) 
the  two  half-choruses  would  always  be  reconciled  and  go 
marching  off  together.  Nevertheless,  the  intrusion  of  the  his- 
trionic element,  the  comparative  rarity  of  the  earliest  dramatic 
meter  (the  trochaic  tetrameter),  and  the  absence  of  a  canonical 
structure  make  it  plain  that  the  recessional  of  the  primitive 
comus  never  developed  into  a  regular  division — in  other  words, 
that  the  exodus  of  Aristophanic  comedy  was  the  product  of  a 
later  period. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Aristophanic  parodus  resembles  the 
agon  and  the  parabasis  in  making  a  large  use  of  the  tetrameter 
{pp.  ciL,  p.  185).  Moreover,  it  contains  distinct  survivals  of 
epirrhematic  composition  (ibid.,  pp.  159  and  366),  so  that,  in 
spite  of  its  histrionic  elements  and  the  absence  of  a  canonical 
form,  the  parodus   ought   to   be   considered   as   having  been 

*  Cf.  Zielinski,  op.  cit.,  p.  190. 


46  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

exclusively  choral  by  origin  and  as  having  developed  out  of  the 
simple  processional  before  the  comus  became  histrionic. 

The  theatrical  comus,  then,  must  have  been  something  as 
follows:  first  a  choral  parodus,  next  a  semi-histrionic  agon,  then 
a  parabasis,  and  finally  a  recessional  which  ultimately  developed 
into  an  exodus.  A  late  notice,^  if  correctly  emended,  informs  us 
that  at  one  time  comedies  contained  no  more  than  three  hundred 
verses.  I  am  of  the  opinion  that  this  is  the  type  of  performance 
alluded  to  and  that  comedy  did  not,  in  essence,  greatly  depart 
therefrom  until  actors,  as  distinct  from  the  chorus,  were  added. 

How  did  this  addition  come  to  be  made  ?  It  is  impossible 
that  the  comic  playwrights,  with  the  actors  of  tragedy  ever 
before  them,  should  never  have  thought  of  taking  this  step. 
Nevertheless,  the  main  impulse  seems  to  have  come  from  another 
direction.  We  have  seen  (p.  36,  above)  that  in  the  non- theatrical 
comus  the  phallus  was  borne  on  a  pole  in  the  ritual  procession 
with  which  the  comus  was  originally  associated ;  it  was  not  worn. 
Neither  is  it  worn  by  the  comus  choreutae  as  represented  on 
Attic  vase  paintings  (Figs.  12-16).  But  in  Old  Comedy  it  is 
clear  that  at  least  some  of  the  characters  wore  the  phallic  emblem. 
That  this  was  in  fact  the  general  practice  appears  from  the 
language  in  which  Aristophanes  boasts  of  the  modesty  of  his 
Clouds: 

And  observe  how  pure  her  morals:  who,  to  notice  first  her  dress, 
Enters  not  with  filthy  symbols  on  her  modest  garments  hung, 
Jeering  bald-heads,  dancing  ballets,  for  the  laughter  of  the  young.* 

And  Dr.  Korte  {op.  cit.,  pp.  66  £f.)  has  collected  ten  passages  in 
other  plays  of  our  poet  which  indicate  that  Aristophanes  was 
not  always  so  puritanical  as  he  claims  to  be  here.  These 
conclusions  are  confirmed  also  by  numerous  representations,  of 

'  Published  by  Usener  in  Rheinisches  Museum  f.  Philologie,  XXVIII  (1873),  418. 

*  Cf.  Aristophanes'  Clouds,  vss.  537  ff.  (Rogers'  translation).  The  original  of 
"filthy  symbols"  is  (tkItivov  Kadei/jiivov.  It  has  therefore  been  suggested,  especially 
since  there  seems  to  be  an  allusion  to  a  phallus  even  in  the  Clouds  (vs.  734),  that 
Aristophanes  is  not  to  be  understood  as  discontinuing  the  use  of  the  phallus  alto- 
gether in  this  play,  but  merely  as  abandoning  the  <pa\\bs  Kadei/xivos  in  favor  of  the 
less  indecent  (paWbs  dvadede/xivos.     Both  types  are  seen  in  Fig.  17. 


INTRODUCTION 


47 


Attic  workmanship,  which  are  plausibly  thought  to  depict  actors 
in  Old  and  Middle  Comedy  (Figs.  17-19)/  By  the  time  of 
New  Comedy,  on  the  contrary,  the  phallus  was  apparently  no 
longer  worn,  and  the  characters  were  garbed  in  the  dress  of 
everyday  life.  Now  the  Dorian  mime  or  farce  was  widely 
cultivated  in  the  Peloponnesus  and  Magna  Graecia.  The 
performers  were  individualized  actors,  not  welded  into  a  chorus. 
They  wore  the  phallus,  had  their  bodies  stuffed  out  grotesquely 
both  in  front  and  behind  by  means  of  copious  padding,  and  in 
general  bear  a  very  close  resemblance  to  the  comic  actors  at 


Fig.  17. — Comic  Actors  and  Flute- Players  upon  an  Attic  Vase  in  Petrograd 

See  p.  47,  n.  i 


Athens  (Figs,  20  and  21).^  Their  performances  were  loosely 
connected,  burlesque  scenes,  abounding  in  stock  characters  and 
enUvened  by  obscenity  and  ribald  jests.  Most  authorities  agree 
that  the  burlesque  episodes  (5)  of  Old  Comedy  are  derived  from 
this  source.  According  to  Aristotle,^  the  Megarians  claimed  that 
comedy  originated  with  them  about  600  B.C.  when  a  democracy 
with  its  resultant  freedom  of  speech  was  estabhshed  among  them. 
It  was  even  asserted  that  Susarion,  the  reputed  founder  of  Attic 
comedy  (see  p.  38,  above),  came  from  Megara,  but  this  claim  is 

'  Figs.  17-19  are  taken  from  Korte,  op.  cit.,  p.  69  (Fig.  i),  p.  78  (Fig.  3),  and 
p.  80  (Fig.  5),  respectively.  In  Fig.  17  there  are  only  three  actors;  the  end  figures 
are  flute-players.  Korte  believes  this  scene  to  be  taken  from  Middle  Comedy.  In 
Fig.  19  the  phallus  has  been  omitted. 

^  Figs.  20  and  21  are  taken  from  Korte,  op.  cit.,  p.  91  (Fig.  8),  and  Baumeister's 
Denkmdler,  Fig.  2099,  respectively.  The  phallus  has  been  omitted  from  some  of 
the  actors. 

3  Cf.  Aristotle's  Poetics  I448a3i  f. 


48 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


apparently  unwarranted."  The  fact  remains,  however,  that 
Aristophanes  and  his  confreres  often  speak  of  stupid,  vulgar 
scenes  or  jokes  as  being  "stolen  from  Megara."^  Though  these 
words  have  been  otherwise  explained,^  I  believe  that  Megara, 
which  is  the  nearest  Dorian  city  to  Attica,  had  something  to  do 
with  the  introduction  of  the  histrionic  element  into  Attic  comedy. 
Of  course,  this  does  not  mean  that  Megara  is  to  be  regarded  as 


Fig.  1 8. — An  Attic  Terra  Cotta  in 
Berlin  Representing  a  Comic  Actor, 
See  p.  47 ,  n.  i 


Fig.  19. — An  Attic  Terra 
Cotta  in  Munich  Representing  a 
Comic  Actor. 

See  p.  47,  n.  i 


the  inventor  of  Athenian  comedy,  for  the  comus  was  indigenous 
and  received  its  development  on  Attic  soil  and  the  type  of  per- 
formance which  came  into  being  after  the  introduction  of  actors 
was  quite  unlike  anything  in  Megara  or  any  other  part  of  the 
Dorian  world. 

•  Those  who  admit  this  claim  rest  imder  the  necessity  of  placing  the  intro- 
duction of  actors  at  this  early  date.  This  would  mean  that  comedy  had  actors 
before  tragedy  did!  On  the  other  hand,  the  reader  needs  to  be  warned  that  I 
place  the  introduction  of  comic  actors  later  than  most  writers. 

'  Cf.  Aristophanes'  Wasps,  vs.  57,  and  Kock,  Comicorum  Graecorum  Frag- 
menta,  I,  9  f.,  fr.  2  (Ecphantides),  and  I,  323,  fr.  244  (Eupolis). 

3  Von  Wilamowitz'  skepticism  with  regard  to  Megarian  comedy,  however, 
has  not  gained  many  converts;  cf.  "Die  megarische  Komodie,"  Hermes,  IX 
(1875),  319  ff. 


INTRODUCTION  49 

With  actors,  impersonation  became  possible  for  the  first  time 
in  Attic  comedy.  Besides  the  nondescript  chorus  and  chorus 
leaders,  there  were  now  performers  who  could  assume  the  identity 
of  real  or  imaginary  characters  and  carry  a  role  or,  by  a  change  of 
mask,  several  roles  through  the  play.  The  importance  of  all 
this  is  too  obvious  to  require  amplification.  It  marked  the 
birth  of  dramatic  comedy  at  Athens.  Through  the  introduction 
of  actors,  comedy  became  amenable  to  several  other  influences. 
Tragedy  could  at  once  make  itself  felt.  A  histrionic  prologue 
could  now  be  added,  the  comic  prologue  corresponding  in  length 


90  M 


Fig.  20. — Actors  of  Dorian  Comedy  upon  a  Corinthian  Crater  in  Paris 
See  p.  47,  n.  2 

and  function  to  the  tragic  prologue  and  first  episode  combined.' 
A  real  agon  of  actors  now  became  possible,  whatever  use  may  have 
been  made  previously  of  the  chorus  leaders  for  this  purpose. 
Furthermore,  the  new  Megarian  burlesque  episodes  (5)  would 
naturally  be  separated  by  stasima  (6)  in  imitation  of  tragedy. 
It  would  also  be  possible  to  insert  an  episode^  between  the  parodus 
and  the  agon,  as  is  done  in  Aristophanes'  Plutus,  vss.  322-486; 
or  between  the  agon  and  the  parabasis,  as  in  Aristophanes' 

'  Cf.  Navarre,  op.  cit.,  p.  268.  The  same  fact  is  brought  out  more  graphically 
in  the  lithographic  table  at  the  close  of  Zieliiiski's  book. 

'  The  episodes  referred  to  in  this  sentence  are  more  properly  termed  "mediat- 
ing scenes"  in  contradistinction  to  the  true  episodes  (5)  which  follow  the  paraba- 
sis (cf.  White,  The  Verse  of  Greek  Comedy,  §§  679  f.)-  Twenty-six  connecting 
links  of  this  sort  occur  in  Aristophanes,  twenty  of  them  just  before  an  agon  or 
parabasis.  Syzygies  are  also  employed  to  extend  the  length  of  the  play,  especially 
in  the  first  half  (cf.  p.  41,  n.  i,  above). 


so 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


Knights,  vss.  461-97;  or  to  compose  a  second  parabasis  and 
to  insert  an  additional  episode  between  them,  as  in  Aristophanes' 
Peace,  vss.  1039-1126,  etc.  In  addition  to  all  this,  tragedy 
would  exert  a  constant  influence  in  elevating  and  standardizing 
all  parts  of  comedy  alike. 

But  the  restricted  and  even  disconnected  method  of  elabora- 
tion employed  in  earHer  comedy,  with  its  invective,  lampoons, 


Fig.  21. — Actors  of  Dorian  Comedy  upon  a  Corinthian  Vase 

See  p.  47,  n.  2 


and  obscene  jests,  would  not  suffice  to  fill  so  ample  a  framework. 
Therefore,  it  became  necessary  to  broaden  and  deepen  the 
plots;  in  fact,  now  for  the  first  time  in  Attic  comedy  was  it 
possible  to  have  a  plot  worthy  of  the  name.  All  this  is  implied 
in  the  words  which  have  already  been  quoted  from  Aristotle 
(p.  35,  above) :  "Developing  a  regular  plot  was  a  SiciUan  inven- 
tion, but  of  the  Athenians  the  first  to  abandon  the  'iambic'  or 
lampooning  form  and  to  begin  to  fashion  comprehensive  themes 
and  plots  {KadoXov  ■Koie'tv  \byovs  koI  fxWovs)  was  Crates."  The 
reference  in  the  first  half  of  this  sentence  is  to  Epicharmus,  whose 


INTRODUCTION  51 

name  actually  appears  in  Aristotle's  text  at  this  point  but  with- 
out grammatical  construction.  Epicharmus  was  a  resident  of 
Megara  Hyblaea  in  Sicily,  whence  he  migrated  to  Syracuse  about 
485  B.C.  Like  the  Megarians  on  the  Greek  mainland,  also  the 
Sicilian  Megarians  laid  claim  to  the  honor  of  having  invented 
comedy.^  They  based  their  pretensions  on  the  fact  that  Epichar- 
mus flourished  and  won  his  reputation  before  486  B.C.,  which  was 
the  terminus  post  quem  for  the  beginning  of  the  official  careers 
of  Magnes  and  Chionides,  who  were  the  first  poets  of  state- 
supported  (as  opposed  to  volunteer)  comedy,  at  the  City 
Dionysia  in  Athens.  Epicharmus  raised  the  Dorian  mime  in 
Sicily  to  literary  importance,  and  seems  to  have  improved  upon 
the  detached  or  but  loosely  connected  scenes  of  his  predecessors 
by  stringing  them  together  upon  the  thread  of  a  common  plot- 
interest.  His  plays  had  no  chorus  and  did  not  touch  upon  his 
contemporaries  or  poHtics.  Now  Aristotle's  words  concerning 
Crates  must  certainly  be  understood  as  indicating  a  resemblance 
between  him  and  Epicharmus  in  at  least  some  of  these  particu- 
lars. The  expression  which  I  have  translated  "to  fashion 
comprehensive  themes  and  plots"  has  been  rendered  "generalized 
his  themes  and  plots"  by  Butcher,  "to  frame  stories  of  a  general 
and  non-personal  nature,  in  other  words.  Fables  or  Plots"  by 
Bywater,  and  "composed  plots  or  fables  of  a  'universal' 
character",  by  Cornford  {op.  cit.,  p.  217).  Whatever  other 
meaning  may  inhere  in  this  phrase,  I  think  that  it  must  be  taken 
to  mean,  first  of  all,  that  Crates,  like  Epicharmus,  made  all  or,  at 
least,  most  of  the  parts  of  his  plays  subservient  to  one  connecting 
idea  or  plot;  and  it  seems  to  me  that  the  previous  clause  which 
refers  to  his  abandonment  of  the  "iambic"  or  lampooning  form 
looks  in  the  same  direction.  In  my  opinion,  the  invective  of  his 
predecessors  had  been  episodic  and  unrelated  to  its  context  by 
any  sequence  of  thought,  often  being  expressed  in  passages  like 

the  following : 

Shall  we  all  a  merry  joke 
At  Archedemus  poke, 
Who  has  not  cut  his  guildsmen  yet,  though  seven  years  old; 

^  Cf.  Aristotle's  Poetics  i448a32-4. 


52  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

Yet  up  among  the  dead 

He  is  demagogue  and  head, 
And  contrives  the  topmost  place  of  the  rascaldom  to  hold  ? 

And  CUsthenes,  they  say, 

Is  among  the  tombs  all  day. 
Bewailing  for  his  lover  with  a  lamentable  whine. 

And  Callias,  I'm  told. 

Has  become  a  sailor  bold, 
And  casts  a  lion's  hide  o'er  his  members  feminine.^ 

Here  this  abuse  is  dragged  in  apropos  of  nothing,  and  the  three 
citizens  who  are  assailed  within  a  score  of  lines  have  no  connection 
with  the  main  theme  of  the  play.  It  was  this  sort  of  thing,  I 
venture  to  beHeve,  that  Crates  discontinued;  and  Aristotle's 
language  does  not  require  us  to  conclude  that  he  relinquished 
scurrihty  altogether.  It  is  usually  thought,  however,  that  Crates 
made  no  assaults  of  any  kind  upon  his  contemporaries  but 
* '  generalized ' '  his  plots  by  treating  imaginary, ' '  ideal ' '  characters 
in  his  plays.  In  other  words,  he  is  supposed  to  have  anticipated 
to  some  extent  the  manner  and  material  of  New  Comedy.  I 
have  no  desire  to  combat  this  view,  which  simply  advances  a 
step  beyond  my  own.  The  main  fact,  that  of  Crates'  having 
invented  plot  sequence  in  Attic  comedy,  can  hardly  be  made  a 
matter  of  dispute. 

We  are  indebted  to  a  late  authority,  Tzetzes,  for  the  following 
statements : 

But  also  Old  Comedy  differs  from  itself  [i.e.,  falls  into  two  types],  for 
those  who  first  estabUshed  the  institution  of  comedy  in  Attica  (and  they 
were  Susarion  and  his  successors)  used  to  bring  on  the  characters  (Trpoo-wTra) 
in  an  undifferentiated  crowd  (draKTajs),  and  laughter  alone  was  the  object 
sought.  But  Cratinus  [a  contemporary  of  Crates],  succeeding  them,  put  a 
stop  to  the  confusion  {ara^iav)  and  set  the  characters  (TrpocrwTra)  in  comedy 
for  the  first  time  at  three;  and  he  added  profit  to  the  pleasure  of  comedy, 
lampooning  the  evildoers  and  chastising  them  with  comedy  as  with  a  pubhc 
scourge.  But  even  he  stUl  shared  in  the  archaic  qualities  and,  slightly,  in 
the  confusion  (dra^tas).^ 

'  Cf.  Aristophanes'  Frogs,  vss.  416-30,  Rogers'  translation.     The  original  is 
more  vulgar  than  would  be  tolerable  in  an  English  translation. 
^  Cf.  Kaibel,  Comicorum  Graecorum  Fragmenta,  p.  18. 


INTRODUCTION  53 

Whatever  the  ultimate  source  of  this  notice,  it  contains  much  of 
value.  In  the  first  place,  a  distinction  is  correctly  drawn 
between  primitive  comedy  (Susarion  to  Cratinus;  ca.  565  to  ca. 
450  B.C.)  and  Old  Comedy  (450  to  ca.  385  B.C.).  The  earlier 
period  is  marked  by  aTa^ia,  which  I  refer  to  the  practice  of  having 
characterless  choreutae  take  part  singly  as  if  they  were  actors 
(see  p.  44,  above).  Though  still  occasionally  guilty  of  this 
practice,  as  even  Aristophanes  sometimes  was,  Cratinus  regu- 
larly withdrew  his  choreutae  from  participation  in  the  dialogue 
and  reduced  the  performers  to  three.  These  three,  however, 
were  now  real  actors,  as  distinct  from  the  chorus  and  chorus 
leaders,  and  played  individualized  roles  which  demanded 
dramatic  impersonation.  The  number  three  was  doubtless  due 
to  contemporaneous  tragedy  in  which  the  number  of  actors 
had  recently  been  increased  by  Sophocles  from  two  to  three 
(see  p.  167,  below). ^ 

A  second  difference  between  primitive  comedy  and  Old 
Comedy  is  found  in  the  use  which  was  made  of  invective.  If 
this  development  had  not  taken  place.  Old  Comedy  would  not 
occupy  the  unique  place  which  it  now  holds  in  the  dramatic 
literature  of  the  world.  As  we  have  just  seen,  the  lampooning 
of  primitive  comedy  was  probably  episodic  and  detached  from 
the  context,  like  that  in  Aristophanes'  Frogs,  vss.  416-30;    a 

^  Some  would  interpret  this  passage  as  meaning  that  Cratinus  was  the  first  to 
observe  the  aesthetic  law  that  not  more  than  three  persons  should  participate  in  the 
same  conversation  (cf.  Rees,  The  So-called  Rule  of  Three  Actors  in  the  Classical 
Greek  Drama,  p.  9,  n.  i).  When  the  only  speakers  were  the  individual  choreutae, 
who  were  twenty-four  in  number,  such  a  restriction  must  have  been  unheard  of. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  it  should  prove  true  that  Megarian  actors  were  brought  in 
before  the  time  of  Cratinus,  then  we  must  suppose  that  their  number  was  at  first 
in  excess  of  three  and  was  reduced  to  three  by  him.  Of  course,  the  use  of  but 
three  actors  in  the  tragedy  and  comedy  of  this  period  would  automatically  result 
in  not  more  than  three  persons  participating  in  a  conversation  and  so  in  the  observ- 
ance of  the  aesthetic  law.  This  statement,  however,  is  subject  to  the  qualification 
that  the  chorus  leaders  continued  to  have  speaking  parts  both  in  comedy  (see  p.  44, 
above),  and  in  tragedy  (cf.  pp.  164  f.  and  169,  below),  and  that  a  fourth  actor  was 
occasionally  employed  (cf.  pp.  171  and  182,  below).  In  any  case  I  am  of  the 
opinion  that  conscious  formulation  of  the  aesthetic  law  was  not  made  until 
Hellenistic  times  (see  pp.  187  f.,  below). 


54  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

whole  play  was  not  devoted  to  one  person,  and  no  citizen  was 
impersonated  by  an  actor.  Its  object  was  merely  to  cause  a 
laugh  and  it  rarely  served  any  useful  purpose,  certainly  none  for 
the  pubHc  interests  of  the  state.  It  was  a  natural  outgrowth 
of  the  magical  abuse  of  the  old  phallic  processions.  Now  Old 
Comedy,  on  the  whole,  was  just  the  reverse  of  this,  and  Cratinus 
seems  to  have  been  the  innovator  who,  "  generaHzing"  his  plots 
by  giving  them  a  single  theme,  after  the  fashion  set  by  Crates, 
devoted  them  solely  or  mainly  to  pohtical  and  social  questions 
and  dragged  his  victims  in  person  upon  his  stage. 

When  did  these  changes  tate  place  ?  First  let  it  be  noted 
how  they  mutually  depend  one  upon  another:  neither  tragedy 
nor  the  Sicilian  mime  could  greatly  influence  early  Attic  comedy 
until  actors,  as  distinct  from  a  chorus,  were  introduced,  nor  could 
their  influence  be  long  delayed  after  the  actors  came.  I  think 
that  these  factors  came  to  fruition  not  long  before  450  B.C. 

a)  Reverting  to  Aristotle's  words  (quoted  on  p.  35,  above), 
when  are  we  to  suppose  that  the  Athenians  began  to  ''treat 
comedy  seriously"  ?  The  most  obvious  answer  •  would  be, 
"486  B.C.,  when  comedy  first  received  official  recognition." 
Chionides  and  Magnes  are  the  poets  of  this  period,  and  there  is 
no  reason  to  believe  that  they  improved  upon  their  immediate 
predecessors  of  the  "volunteer"  comedy  otherwise  than  in  a 
more  worthy  Hterary  treatment  of  their  plays.  Aristophanes 
describes  Magnes'  efforts  in  the  following  terms: 

All  voices  he  uttered,  all  forms  he  assumed,  the  Lydian,  the  fig- 
piercing  Fly, 

The  Harp  with  its  strings,  the  Bird  with  its  wings,  the  Frog  with 
its  yellow-green  dye.' 

It  is  plain  that  these  words  refer  to  plays  by  Magnes  which  were 
called  The  Lydians,  The  Gall-Flies,  The  Harpists,  The  Birds,  and 
The  Frogs.  These  titles  at  once  remind  us  of  the  animal  masks 
which  were  so  common  in  the  comus  (Figs.  12-16).  Of  course, 
state  supervision  impHes  a  certain  amount  of  serious  attention. 
Nevertheless  I  think  that  in  this  passage  Aristotle  had  a  later 
period  in  mind. 

'  Cf.  Aristophanes'  Knights,  vss.  522  f.,  Rogers'  translation. 


INTRODUCTION  55 

It  was  long  ago  pointed  out  that  Attic  comedies  were  not 
published  before  the  time  of  Cratinus,  The  fact  of  publication 
shows  that  comedy  was  at  last  being  treated  with  true  seriousness 
and  helps  to  explain  the  ignorance,  in  later  times,  with  respect  to 
certain  points.  Though  the  state  records  gave  the  names  of 
comic  victors  from  486  B.C.  on,  they  did  not  include  information 
upon  matters  of  mere  technique.  For  knowledge  of  this  sort 
Aristotle  (the  ultimate  source  of  Tzetzes)  and  all  other  ancient 
investigators  were  almost  entirely  dependent  upon  what  they 
could  glean  from  the  editions  of  Cratinus,  Crates,  and  their 
successors.  Now  the  earliest  texts  available  revealed  the  use  of 
characters,  prologues,  and  three  actors  as  well  as  of  the  parodus, 
agon,  parabasis,  and  exodus.  Why  did  Aristotle  specifically 
name  the  first  group  and  not  the  second  ? 

In  my  opinion,  Professor  Capps^  has  provided  the  correct 
answer.  He  maintains  that  Aristotle  distinguished  two  kinds 
of  ignorance  concerning  the  history  of  comedy.  In  the  first 
place,  there  was  the  Egyptian  darkness  which  covered  the  period 
previous  to  486  B.C.  For  example,  when  Aristotle  declared  that 
comedy  "already  had  certain  forms"  (crxi7juard  tlvo)  at  this  time, 
he  could  not  have  specified  what  these  forms  were;  he  was 
merely  surmising  that  the  fact  of  state  supervision  presupposed 
more  or  less  definiteness  of  form.  In  the  second  place,  there  was 
the  period  of  semi-darkness  immediately  after  486  B.C.  Tradi- 
tion must  have  placed  in  this  period  the  introduction  of  charac- 
ters, prologues,  and  three  actors,  and  so  Aristotle  singled  them 
out  for  mention.  But  tradition  had  not  handed  down  also  the 
names  of  the  innovators,  and  in  the  absence  of  texts  it  was 
impossible  to  probe  the  matter  further.  Needless  to  state,  the 
situation  regarding  the  other  innovations,  whether  of  this  period 
or  earHer,  was  much  worse. 

b)  Though  Thespis  is  said  to  have  invented  the  prologue  in 
tragedy,  this  statement  is  justly  discredited  (see  p.  298,  below) ; 
and  no  tragedy  is  actually  known  to  have  had  one  before 

*  Cf.  "The  Introduction  of  Comedy  into  the  City  Dionysia,"  University  of 
Chicago  Decennial  Publications,  VI,  266  ff. 


56  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

Phrynichus'  Phoenician  Women  (476  B.C.).  Aeschylus'  Suppli- 
ants (about  490  B.C.)  and  Persians  (472  B.C.)  have  none.  It  is 
most  unlikely  that  comedy  should  have  anticipated  tragedy  in 
this  feature. 

c)  Capps^  has  plausibly  suggested  that  knowledge  of  Epi- 
charmus'  achievements  in  comedy  was  brought  to  Athens  by 
Aeschylus,  who  is  known  to  have  been  in  Sicily  ca.  476  B.C., 
shortly  after, 47 2  B.C.,  and  for  about  two  years  before  his  death 
there  in  456  B.C. 

d)  The  third  actor  was  introduced  into  tragedy  between 
about  468  and  458  B.C.,  and  it  is  more  probable  that  the  use  of 
three  actors  in  comedy  was  borrowed  from  tragedy  than  vice 
versa. 

e)  Cratinus  won  his  first  victory  at  the  City  Dionysia  of 
452  B.C.  and  (/)  Crates  at  that  of  450  B.C.  Doubtless  the  activity 
of  both  men  began  somewhat  earlier. 

g)  It  is  incredible  that  the  state  should  have  postponed 
official  control  of  comedy  at  the  Lenaean  festival  until  about 
442  B.C.,  if  the  developments  which  we  have  been  sketching  had 
taken  place  long  before. 

h)  The  earliest  comedian  to  refer  to  Megarian  comedy  is 
Ecphantides,  whose  first  victory  was  won  between  457  and  453 
B.C.  Whenever  Aristophanes  ''names  any  writers  of  'vulgar 
comedy'  who  used  the  stale  antics  which  he  repudiates,  these 
writers  are  his  own  predecessors  and  contemporaries  of  the 
Attic  stage.  "^  This  implies  that  the  borrowing  was  a  fairly 
recent  occurrence. 

i)  Finally,  Megara  was  actually  under  the  sway  of  Athens 
during  460/59-446/45  B.C.  The  opportunity  for  the  exchange  of 
ideas  between  Megara  and  Athens  would  naturally  be  most 
favorable  at  that  time. 

In  view  of  the  preceding  considerations,  I  am  of  the  opinion 
that  actors  were  introduced  into  Athenian  comedy  shortly 
before  450  B.C. 

'  Cf .  Columbia  University  Lectures  on  Greek  Literature,  p.  130. 
*  Cf.  Cornford,  op.  cit.,  pp.  179  and  193,  n.  i;  see  p.  48,  above. 


INTRODUCTION 


57 


The  Greek  Theater} — Since,  as  we  have  s  *ien,  both  tragedy  and 
comedy  among  the  Greeks  were  choral  by  origin,  the  center  of 
their  theaters  was  a  circular  "4gIl£lnS^l3£g!!-Called  an  orchestra^ . 
{dpxvf^Tpa),  in  the  middle  of  which  stood  Sijhymele  (dvnekri)  or_ 
"altar"  (Figs.  22  f.).^    When  an  actor  was  added  to  the  tragic 


Fig.  22. — Ground  Plan  of  a  Greek  Theater  with  Names  of  Its  Parts 
See  p.  57,  n.  3 

choreutae,  it  became  necessary  to  provide  .a-dr£ssing=roDm-whefe-^ 
he.mighfe-^angg;;;^ajnask  and-Gosttaae, — This  temporaiy-struc- 
tnrg'was'called  a,.aK7]P'n  C'hut":  our  English  word  "scene"),  and 

*  It  is  unfortunate  that  there  is  at  present  no  satisfactory  book  dealing  with 
the  Greek  theater  on  the  structural  side.  English  readers  are  practically  restricted 
to  Haigh's  The  Attic  Theatre,  revised  by  Pickard-Cambridge  in  1907,  which  devotes 
nearly  one  hundred  pages  to  a  summary  and  criticism  of  the  different  views.  But 
this  work  has  already  been  off  the  press  for  a  decade  and  on  the  main  issue,  viz., 

(Footnote  i  continued  on  p.  58) 

*  For  a  slight  variability  in  the  application  of  the  word  orchestra  see  p.  83  and 
nn.  I  and  2,  below;  see  also  p.  72,  n.  3. 

3  Fig.  2  2  is  specially  drawn  and  does  not  exactly  reproduce  any  single  theatrical 
structure.  Fig.  23  is  taken,  simplified  and  slightly  altered,  from  Dorpfeld-Reisch, 
Das  griecMsche  Theater,  PI.  VIII  (o). 


58 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


at  first  stood  outside  the  spectators'  range  of  vision —  Afterward 
it^as'Brought  immediately  behind  the  orchestral  circle  and  then 
Served  also  as  a  background  in  front  of  which  the  dramatic  action 
was"peHofmed7~Jts  face  was  pierced  by  doors,  usually  thrpp  hnt 
soBietimes  only  one,  which  were  conventionally  thought  of  as 
leading  into  asThahy  different  houses.  The  scene- building  often 
had  two  projecting  side  wings  called  parascenia  (ira pa, "  beside"  + 
(TKTjprf).     The  front  of  the  scene-building  and  of  the  parascenia 


PW05CE.NIUM^  FWROOU^ 


ORCMtSTRA 


Fig.  23. — Cross-Section  of  a  Greek  Theater  with  Names  of  Its  Parts 
See  p.  57,  n.  3 

came  to  be  decoratedjwithji  row  of  columns,  the  proscenium 
(irpoj'^^et^e^^a-Krjvq) .  \  The  top  ^niiis  proscenium  was  used 
by -actors  when  they  had  occasion  to  speak  from  the  housetop 
or'lvrere  thought  of  "as  standing  upon  some  elevation.     In  the 


_agJr>^wlTPtjipr  thfi  GreeT^  theat^rnf  thftj-lassiral  period  was  provided  with  a  raised 
stage  for  actors,  makes  too  many  concessions  to  the  traditional  view.  For  German 
readers,  on  the  other  hand,  the  situation  is  not  a  great  deal  better.  Dorpfeld's 
book  has  been  before  the  public  for  over  twenty  years,  and  in  the  interim  his 
opinions  have  necessarily  changed  on  many  points.  He  has  promised  a  thoroughly 
revised  second  edition,  which  is  demanded  also  by  the  excavation  of  additional 
theaters  and  by  the  pubHcation  of  numerous  special  articles.  But  it  is  hardly 
likely  that  this  promise  will  ever  be  redeemed.  The  only  comfort  is  to  be  derived 
from  the  fact  that,  as  works  of  major  importance  have  appeared,  Dorpfeld  has 
promptly  published  critiques  which  have  often  been  of  such  length  as  to  furnish 
convenient  restatements  of  his  views.  These  more  recent  works  in  German, 
however,  have  attempted  merely  to  force  a  modification  of  certain  details  in  Dorp- 
feld's position;  they  are  in  no  wise  calculated  to  serve  as  independent  presentations 
of  the  whole  matter  or  as  a  means  of  orientation  for  the  uninitiated. 

From  the  extensive  bibhographical  material  which  is  available  it  is  manifestly 
impossible  to  cite  more  than  a  fraction  here.  The  outstanding  books  are  Dorpfeld- 
Reisch,  Das  griechische  Theater  (1896),  defended  against  reviewers  and  partially 
modified  in  "Das  griechische  Theater  Vitruvs,"  Athenische  Mittheilungen,  XXII 


INTRODUCTION  59 

course  of^time_it_  was  _emplQy-e(i  also  for  divinities,  especially  in 
epiphanies  at  the  close  of  tragedies  (see  p.  292,  below).  Since 
this  spot  was  never  invaded  by  the  singing  or  dancing  of  the 
chorus  and  was  the  only  place  reserved  for  actors  exclusively,  it 
came  to  be  called  the  logium  (Koyetop,  from  Xeyeiv  to  "  speak  ")^or_ 
*^speakmg  place.  "^  BeTiind  the  logium  was  the  second  story  of 
the  scene-building,'  known  as  the  episcenium  {iTKXKrjvLov ;  evrt, 
* '  upon^-f-  (TK-qurj) ;  its  front  wall  was  pierced  by  one  or  more  large 
doorways.  PasFeacFTparascenium  a  "side  entrance"  or  parodus 
'tjapoQof,  Trapa,  " beside" +656s,  "passage")  led  into  the  orches- 
tra. These  entrances  were  used  by  the  audience  before  and  after 
the  play,  and  during  it  by  the  actors  (who  could  use  also  the 


(1897),  439  ff.,  and  XXIII  (1898),  326  ff.;  Puchstein,  Die  griechische  Bilhne 
(1901),  answered  by  Dorpfeld  in  Athenische  Mittheilungen,  XXVIII  (1903), 
3835.;  and  Fiechter,  Die  baugeschichtliche  Entwicklung  des  antiken  Theaters 
(1914),  summarized  by  its  author  and  criticized  by  Dorpfeld  in  Jahrhuch  d.  arch. 
Institnts,  Anzciger,  XXX  (1915),  93  ff.  and  96  ff.,  respectively.  Other  important 
publications  are  von  WUamowitz-MoUendorff ,  "  Die  Biihne  des  Aischylos,"  Hermes, 
XXI  (1886),  597  ff.;  Todt,  "Noch  Einmal  die  Biihne  des  Aeschylos,"  Philologus, 
XL VIII  (1889),  505  ff.;  Capps,  "Vitruvius  and  the  Greek  Stage,"  University  of 
Chicago  Studies  in  Classical  Philology,  I  (1893),  3  ff.;  Bethe,  Prolegomena  zur 
Geschichte  des  Theaters  im  Alterthtim  (1896),  and  "Die  hellenistischen  Biihnen  und 
ihre  Decorationen,"  Jahrbuch  d.  arch.  Institiits,  XV  (1900),  59  ff.  (answered  by 
Dorpfeld  in  "Die  vermeintliche  Biihne  des  hellenistischen  Theaters,"  ibid.,  XVI 
[1901],  22  ff.);  Petersen,  "Nachlese  in  Athen:  Das  Theater  des  Dionysos,"  ibid., 
XXIII  (1908),  33  ff.;  and  Versakis,  "Das  Skenengebaude  d.  Dionysos-Theaters," 
ibid.,  XXIV  (1909),  194  ff.,  answered  by  Dorpfeld,  ibid.,  pp.  224  ff.  Still  other 
titles  will  be  cited  as  they  are  needed  in  the  discussion.  See  also  p.  2  2 1 ,  below.  For 
reports  on  the  excavations  of  various  theaters  the  reader  should  consult  the  biblio- 
graphical references  given  by  Dorpfeld-Reisch  and  Fiechter  in  their  footnotes. 

'  Dorpfeld  claims  that  the  name  was  given  because  the  speakers  stood  there  in 
addressing  the  public  assemblies  and  that  the  same  place  was  known  as  the  theolo- 
gium  when  used  by  divinities;  cf.  Athenische  Mittheilungen,  XXIII  (1898),  348  f., 
and  XXVIII  (1903),  395,  and  Jahrbuch  d.  arch.  Instituts,  Anzeiger,  XXX  (1915), 
98.  Reisch  thought  that  logium  was  the  name  of  some  kind  of  special  structure 
in  the  orchestra;  cf.  Das  griechische  Theater,  p.  302.  Inscriptions  prove  the  pres- 
ence of  a  logium  in  the  Delian  theater  in  279  B.C.  {els  rb  XoyeTov  ttjs  o-ktivtjs)  and 
180  B.C.  (rrjv  KaTa(TKevr]v  tQv  irLvaKwv  tQiv  iirl  rh  \oye2ov);  cf.  Homolle,  Bulletin  de 
Correspondance  Hellenique,  XVIII  (1894),  162  and  165,  and  Robinson,  American 
Journal  of  Philology,  XXV  (1904),  191;  but  they  do  not  make  its  nature  clear. 
Personally  I  am  of  the  opinion  that  at  Athens  speakers  always  stood  in  the  orchestra 
to  address  the  public  assemblies  until  the  building  of  the  Nero  stage  about  67  a.d.; 


6o  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DFAMA 

doors  in  the  scene-building)  and  the  chorus.  The  parodi  wer^ 
often  framed  by  beautiful  gateways  (Figs.  5 1  f .) .  The  remainder 
of  the  orchestral  circle  was  surrounded  by  th^auditorium,~the 
**lheater"  proper.'^  Chorus  and  actors  stood  on  the  same  level 
in  the  orchestra  or  in  the  space  between  it  and  the  scene-building. 
There_was  no  stagejnthe  GreeSTtheaters  until  about^ebegin- 
ning  of  the  Christian  era. 

"""BuT'when  the  Greek  theaters  came  under  Roman  influence 
and  were  provided  with  a  stage,  these  technical  terms  naturally 
acquired  a  somewhat  different  significance  (Figs.  24  and  62-64).^ 
The  proscenium  was  still  the  columned  wall  in  front  of  the  scene- 
building,  but  it  now  stood  upon  the  stage  (at  the  rear),  and  the 
stage  itself  was  the  logium.  Whenever  theophanies  required  a 
still  higher  level,  this  was  furnished  by  the  top  of  the  proscenium,^ 
which  was  called  the  theologium  (deoXoyelov;  deos,  "god"-f- 
'Koyelov)  or  "speaking  place  of  divinities."''    The  space  beneath 

cf.  Flickinger,  Plutarch  as  a  Source  of  Information  on  the  Greek  Theater  (1904), 
p.  s$,  and  see  p.  102,  below.  My  present  view,  therefore,  is  that  logium  suffered 
a  change  of  meaning,  being  first  applied  to  the  top  of  the  proscenium  and  being 
used  for  elevated  action  of  various  kinds,  as  explained  in  the  text,  and  afterward 
being  applied  to  the  stage  as  the  place  of  actors  and  public  speakers.  In  either 
case,  it  referred  to  the  same  general  part  of  the  theater,  viz.,  an  elevated  platform 
in  front  of  the  scene-building.  But  the  original  application  of  this  term  is  one  of 
the  most  perplexing  problems  in  connection  with  scenic  antiquities,  and  it  is 
earnestly  to  be  hoped  that  additional  evidence  may  be  brought  to  light  which  wiU 
unmistakably  reveal  its  earlier  history.  The  word  does  not  appear  in  literature 
until  Roman  times  (thrice  in  Plutarch),  but  then  indisputably  means  "stage." 
See  next  paragraph  in  text. 

'"Theater"  {diarpov)  is  derived  from  OeoiffOai,  to  "see,"  and  was  originally 
applied  to  the  space  occupied  by  the  spectators.  The  wider  meaning  was  a  natural 
but  later  development.  It  is  customary  to  employ  the  Latin  terra  cavea  ("an 
excavated  place")  to  express  the  narrower  meaning. 

'  Fig.  24  is  taken  from  Wilberg's  drawing,  simplified  by  the  omission  of  numer- 
ous details,  in  Forschimgen  in  Ephesos,  II,  Fig.  96.  I  am  responsible  for  the  addi- 
tion of  the  names. 

3  That  this  platform  (or  rather  its  equivalent  in  purely  Roman  theaters) 
might  be  conventionally  regarded  as  the  roof  of  the  scene-building  appears  from 
Seneca  Medea,  vs.  973  (Medea  speaking):  "excelsa  nostrae  tecta  conscendam 
domus,"  and  vs.  995  (Jason  speaking) :  "en  ipsa  tecti  parte  praecipiti  imminet." 

*  The  word  occurs  only  in  Pollux,  Onomasticon,  IV,  §  127. 


INTRODUCTION 


61 


the  stage,  or  its  front  wall  alone,  was  known  as  the  hyposcenium 
{v7ro<TKr]vLov',  VTTO,  " beneath" +crK77i'i7).^  There  were  now  two 
sets  of  parodi,  leading  upon  the  stage  and  into  the  orchestra 
respectively.  These  two  paragraphs  are  meant  for  purposes  of 
orientation  and  are  written  from  the  standpoint  of  one  who 
believes  with  Dorpfeld  that  in  Greek  theaters  of  the  classical 
period  actors  and  chorus  normally  moved  upon  the  same  level.^ 


Fig.  24. — Cross-Section  of  the  Graeco-Roman  Theater  at  Ephesus  with  Names 

of  Its  Parts. 

See  p.  60,  n.  2 


A  Greek  town  could  hardly  be  so  small  or  so  remote  as  not 
to  have  its  own  theater  and  dramatic  festival  (Figs.  25  and  70 f.).^ 
rQie  Greek  theaters  were  regularly  built  upon  a  hillside  and  often 
commanded_aJi_o.utlo<3k,oyer  a  scene~of  great  naturanbeauty' 
aiid_pict«fesqtteness  (Figs.  26-28).''    So  far  as  such  structures 

'  Dorpfeld  applies  the  term  to  the  first  story  of  the  purely  Greek  (stageless) 
theater  (see  p.  100,  below). 

'  For  a  discussion  of  the  technical  terms  from  the  traditional  standpoint,  cf. 
A.  Miiller,  "  Untersuchungen  zu  den  Buhnenalterthiimern,"  Philologus,  Supple- 
mentband,  VII  (1899),  3  ff.  Many  of  the  terms,  notably  o-ktji'tJ,  have  numerous 
secondary  meanings;  cf.  Flickinger,  Plutarch  as  a  Source  of  Information  on  the 
Greek  Theater,  pp.  23  ff.,  and  Scherling,  De  Vocis  "SiKtjvri,  Quantum  ad  Theatrum 
Graecum  Pertinet,  Significatiotie  et  Usu  (1906).  Th3miele  is  sometimes  extended  in 
application  so  as  to  denote  the  whole  orchestra;  hence  6vfie\iK6s  was  sometimes 
applied  to  purely  orchestral  performers  (or  their  performances)  in  contradistinction 
to  those  who  came  into  more  immediate  relationship  with  the  scene-buUdlng  and 
who  were  in  consequence  known  as  o-ktjvlkoI  (see  pp.  96  f.,  below). 

3  Fig.  25  is  taken  from  a  photograph  by  Professor  D.  M.  Robinson. 

■*  Figs.  26  f .  are  taken  from  photographs  by  Dr.  A.  S.  Cooley;  Fig.  28  from  one 
by  Professor  D.  M.  Robinson. 


62 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


have  come  down  to  us,  the  oldest  is  the  theater  of  Dionysus 
Eleuthereus  at  Athens,  and  this  is  also  the  one  of  greatest  interest 
to  us,  for  the  reason  that  in  it  were  produced  practically  all  the 
masterpieces  of  the  greatest  Greek  dramatists  (Figs,  i  and 
31-41).^  It  seems  strange  that  this  building  should  not  have 
remained  continuously  known  to  men  from  ancient  times  until 


Fig.  29. — Plan  of  the  Acropolis  at  Athens 
See  p.  62,  n.  2 


the  present  hour,  but  in  fact  its  very  location  passed  into  oblivion 
for  centuries.  During  mediaeval  times  and  until  well  into  the 
modern  era  it  was  thought  that  the  theater  or  odeum  of  Herodes 
Atticus,  a  Roman  structure  of  the  second  century  a.d.  and 
situated  at  the  opposite  end  of  the  Acropolis,  represented  the 
Dionysiac  theater  of  the  classical  period  (Fig.  29).^  The  correct 
site  was  first  pointed  out  by  R.  Chandler  in  1765,  and  is  clearly 
indicated  by  a  bronze  coin  of  imperial  times  which  shows  the 
relation  subsisting  between  the  theater  of  Dionysus  and  the 

'  Fig.  I  is  taken  from  a  photograph  furnished  by  Professor  D.  M.  Robinson. 
*  Fig.  29  is  specially  drawn  and  is  based  upon  several  different  drawings. 


Fig.  25. — Theater  at  Oeniadae  in  Acarnania 
See  p.  61,  n.  3 


Fig.  26. — Theater  and  Temple  of  Apollo  at  Delphi 

See  p.  61,  n.  4 


i'Lu.  27. — Theater  at  Alegalopolis  in  Arcadia 
See  p.  61,  n.  4 


Fig.  28. — Theater  at  Pergamum  in  Asia  Minor 
See  p.  61,  n.  4 


INTRODUCTION 


63 


Parthenon  (Figs.  30  f.).^  Excavations  were  conducted  desul- 
torily from  time  to  time,  beginning  in  184 1,  but  were  not  com- 
pleted until  the  work  under  Dorpfeld's  direction  in  1886,  1889, 
and  1895. 

The  oldest  structure  in  the  precinct  of  Dionysus  Eleuthereus 
is  the  earlier  temple  (Fig.  32).^  This  was  built  in  the  sixth 
century  B.C.,  possibly  in  534  B.C., 
when  Pisistratus  estabhshed  the 
tragic  contest.  Here  was  housed 
the  cult  image  of  Dionysus  which 
had  been  brought  from  Eleutherae. 

Somewhat  later  are  the  remains 
of  the  early  orchestra.  According 
to  late  notices,^  the  original  place 
of  holding  theatrical  performances 
in  Athens  was  an  orchestra  in  the 
old  market  place,  the  location  of 
which  has  not  yet  been  determined. 
At  that  period  the  audience  sat 
upon  "wooden  bleachers"  (upta), 
which  are  said"*  to  have  collapsed  on  the  occasion  of  a  contest 
between  Aeschylus,  Pratinas,  and  Choerilus  in  the  seventieth 

^Fig.  30  is  taken  from  Wieseler's  Theater gehaude  und  Denkmaler  d.  Biihnen- 
wesens  bei  den  Griechern  und  Romern,  PI.  I,  Fig.  i,  and  is  magnified  two  diame- 
ters as  compared  with  the  original  coin.  See  also  the  medallion  on  the  outside 
cover,  which  is  reproduced  from  the  British  Museum  Catalogue  of  Greek  Coins, 
Attica,  Megaris,  Aegina,  PI.  XIX,  Fig.  8.  Fig.  31  is  from  a  photograph  by 
Dr.  A.  S.  Cooley. 

'  Fig.  32  is  redrawn,  with  slight  alterations,  from  Dorpfeld-Reisch,  Das 
griechische  Theater,  PI.  II,  The  age  of  the  different  remains  is  indicated  in  colors 
in  ibid.,  PI.  I. 

*  Cf.  Photius,  S.V.  tKpia-  TO.  iv  rrj  dyopg.,  dcp''  Siv  iffeQvTo  roiis  AwvvcnaKoi>t 
iywva^  irplv  ■fj  KaTacrKevaffdTJvai  rb  iv  Atovtjcrov  diaTpov;   likewise  s.v.  Xijvaiov  and 

^  Cf.  Suidas,  s.v.  Uparivas  ....  dvTrjyuvl^eTo  8^  Alcrxv^V  Te  Kal  Xoip/Xy,  iirl 
T'Qs  i^dofji,7]KO(rTrjs  OXv/XTriddos,  ....  iiri.8eiKvviJi.4vov  8i  toijtov  ffwi^Tj  rd  tKpia,  i(p^ 
&v  eaT-qKeirav  ol  dearal,  irecreiv.  Kal  iK  toi/tou  diarpov  ii>Ko8op,'q6r]  '' A.dy)valoL%.  It 
is  also  possible  that  the  orchestra  in  the  precinct  of  Dionysus  is  somewhat  earlier 
than  is  maintained  in  the  text,  possibly  going  back  to  the  vicinity  of  534  B.C., 
and  that  it  was  the  earlier  and  less  substantial  seats  near  it  which  collapsed  co. 
499  B.C. 


Fig.  30. — Athenian  Coin  in 
the  British  Museum  Showing  the 
Parthenon  and  Outline  of  the 
Theater  of  Dionysus  Eleuthereus. 

See  p.  63,  n.  1 


64 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


PREONCT 
OF 

DIONYSUS     ELEUTHEREUS 


LATER  TEMPLE 


\ 


Fig.  32. — Precinct  of  Dionysus  Eleuthereus  in  Athens,  Showing  Dorpfeld's 
Restoration  of  the  Early  Orchestra  and  of  the  Lycurgus  Theater. 

See  p.  63,  n.  2 


Fig.  31. — Parthenon  and  Theater  of  Dionysus;  in 
Foreground  Altar  in  Precinct  of  Dionysus  Fleuthereus. 

See  p.  63.  n.  i 


Fig.  33.— East  Fragment  of  \\'all  Belonging  to  the 
Early  Orchestra  in  Athens. 

See  p.  65,  n.  i 


Fig.  34. — West  Fragment  of  Wall  Belonging  to  ihe 
Early  Orchestra  in  Athens. 


INTRODUCTION  6$ 

Olympiad  (about  499  B.C.).  In  consequence,  a  new  theater  was 
constructed  in  the  precinct  of  Dionysus,  where  the  seats,  though 
still  of  wood,  could  be  supported  in  part  by  the  south  slope  of  the 
Acropolis.  When  the  stone  theater  on  this  site  was  first  brought 
to  Hght,  it  was  erroneously  supposed  that  this  was  the  structure 
which  had  been  erected  as  a  result  of  the  accident  just  mentioned. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  practically  all  that  remains  of  the  first 
theater  are ^ certain  fragments  of  the  orchestra  (Figs.  33  f.).^ 
These  are  sufficient  to  indicate  that  this  orchestra  was  about 
eighty-eight  feet  in  diameter  and  stood  some  fifty  feet  farther 
south  than  the  later  orchestra  (Figs.  32a  and  81).^     As  it  receded 


Fig.  32fl. — Cross-Section  of  Precinct  of  Dionysus   Eleuthereus  in  Athens, 
Showing  Later  and  Early  Temples  and  Early  Terrace  and  Later  Orchestra. 

See  p.  65,  n.  2 

from  the  Acropolis  it  was  banked  up  to  a  maximum  of  about  six 
and  a  half  feet,  leaving  a  decHvity  immediately  behind  it.  The 
extant  plays  of  this  period  show  that  for  about  thirty  years  no 
background  of  any  kind  stood  in  this  declivity  (seep.  226,  below). 
Theatrical  properties,  such  as  a  tomb,  might  be  temporarily 
built  at  the  center  or  to  one  side  of  the  orchestra.  If  dressing- 
rooms  were  then  provided  for  the  actors  and  chorus  they  must 
have  stood  some  distance  away.  In  the  absence  of  a  back  scene, 
the  performers  could  enter  only  at  the  sides.  These  same 
entrances  were  used  also  by  the  spectators  in  assembling.     The 

'  Figs.  S3  i-  ^re  taken  from  photographs  by  Dr.  A.  S.  Cooley.  The  position 
of  these  stones  is  marked  by  B  and  C  respectively  in  Fig.  32.  Another  arc  of  the 
same  orchestral  circle  is  indicated  by  a  cutting  in  the  native  rock  near  the  east 
parodus,  A  in  Fig.  32. 

»Fig.  32a  is  taken  from  F.  Noack,  S/ct/j/tj  TpayiKi^,  eine  Studie  tiber  die  sceni' 
schen  Anlagen  auf  der  Orchestra  des  Aischylos  und  der  anderen  Tragiker  (1915),  p.  3. 


66  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

seats,  being  of  wood  until  the  fourth  century,  have  left  no  trace; 
but  there  can,  of  course,  be  no  doubt  of  their  position  on  the 
slope.  Well  up  the  side  an  ancient  road  cut  the  auditorium  into 
an  upper  and  lower  section^  and  permitted  ingress  and  egress 
for  the  audience  at  two  additional  points.  The  Athenian 
theater  was  somewhat  unusual  in  having  these  upper  entrances. 
About  465  B.C.,  as  the  plays  indicate,^  a  wooden  scene- 
building  was  set  up  behind  the  orchestra,  where  the  decHvity 
had  been.3  xhe  front  of  this  was  probably  pierced  by  three 
doors,  which  might  be  conventionally  thought  of  as  leading  to 
as  many  different  buildings,  and  thus  the  number  of  entrances 
available  for  the  actors'  use  was  more  than  doubled.  This 
seemingly  simple  alteration  produced  profound  changes  in 
dramatic  technique  (see  pp.  228-3 1,  below).  The  scene-building 
of  this  period  must  be  thought  of  as  quite  unpretentious:  its 
material  was  wood;  it  probably  consisted  of  but  a  single  story, 
with  parascenia  but  no  columned  proscenium  (Fig.  74;  see 
pp.  235  and  339  fif.,  below).  Its  construction  was  flimsy  enough 
for  it  to  be  capable  of  being  easily  rebuilt  or  remodeled  to  meet 
the  scenic  requirements  of  each  drama,  for  of  course  it  was  not 
until  long  after  the  introduction  of  a  scenic  background  that  the 
plays  were  uniformly  laid  before  a  palace  or  temple.  According 
to  Aristotle,  Sophocles  was  the  inventor  of  scene-painting,  and 
this  is  also  said  to  have  been  invented  during  the  lifetime  of 
Aeschylus.4  If  these  notices  are  correct,  we  must  suppose  that 
scene-painting  was  invented  in  the  decade  ending  in  458  B.C.  and 
so  under  theatrical  conditions  such  as  have  just  been  described. 
This  would  mean  that  at  first  the  scenery  must  have  been 
attached  directly  to  the  scene-building  itself  and  not  inserted 
between  the  intercolumniations  of  the  proscenium  columns. 

'  Possibly  the  seats  did  not  go  back  of  this  road  at  this  period;  they  certainly 
did  in  the  fourth  century  (Fig.  32  and  J  in  Fig.  81). 

^  Cf.  Dignan,  The.  Idle  Actor  in  Aeschylus  (1905),  p.  13,  n.  14. 

3  Preferably,  in  the  south  margin  of  the  old  orchestra-terrace  and  behind  it; 
see  Fig.  82  and  pp.  339  ff.,  below. 

iCf.  Aristotle's  Poetics  1449018,  and  Vitruvius,  De  Architectura,  VII,  pra©- 
fatio,  §  II. 


INTRODUCTION 


67 


The  next  building  in  the  precinct  seems  to  have  been  the 
later  temple,  slightly  south  of  the  earUer  one  (Fig.  32).  Its 
substructure  was  of  breccia  (conglomerate) ,  and  its  erection  must 
be  assigned  to  about  the  last  quarter  of  the  fifth  century  b.c.^ 
An  image  of  Dionysus  by  Alcamenes  found  its  home  here. 

Of  the  same  material  are  the  foundations  of  the  parascenia 
and  of  the  front  and  back  walls  of  the  scene-building  (Fig.  35),^ 
and  perhaps  they  are  to  be  assigned  to  the  same  period  as  the 
temple  which  has  just  been  mentioned.^     The  superstructure 


£ 


Fig.  35. — Outline  of  the  Oldest  Walls  of  the  Scene-Building  in  Athens 

See  p.  67,  n.  2 

was  still  of  wood,  since  the  wide  variation  of  scenic  setting  called 
for  a  background  which  could  readily  be  adapted  to  changing 
needs.  It  is  likely  that  the  ten  square  holes  in  the  rear  founda- 
tion wall  (Fig.  38)  were  intended  to  receive  the  supporting  beams 
of  such  an  adjustable  structure.""  Probably  the  scene-building 
now  rose  to  a  second  story,  a  supposition  which  is  confirmed  by  the 

'  Dorpfeld,  following  Reisch,  is  willing  to  accept  a  date  as  early  as  421-415  B.C., 
cf.  Das  griechische  Theater,  pp.  21  f. 

'  Fig.  35  is  taken  from  Fiechter,  op.  ciL,  Fig.  14. 

3  So  Furtwangler,  "Zum  Dionysostheater  in  Athen,"  Sitzungsberickie  d.  bayer. 
Akadentie  der  Wissensckaflen  zu  Munchen,  philosophisch-philologische  u.  historische 
Classe,  1901,  p.  411;  Puchstein,  op.  cit.,  pp.  137  ff.;  E.  A.  Gardner,  Ancient  Athens, 
pp.  435  f.  and  448;  and  Fiechter,  op.  cit.,  p.  11.  Dorpfeld,  on  the  contrary,  would 
attribute  these  foundations  to  the  Lycurgus  theater  in  the  next  century;  cf.  Das 
griechische  Theater,  pp.  59  ff. 

4  Cf.  Dorpfeld,  "Das  griechische  Theater  zu  Pergamon,"  Athenische  Mit- 
theilungen,  XXXII  (1907),  231;  but  differently  in  Das  griechische  Theater,  pp.  61  ff. 


68  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

use  of  the  crane  or  ixrjxo-vi]  ("machine")  in  the  extant  plays  of  this 
period  (see  pp.  289  and  292  f.,  below).  At  about  the  same  time 
a  proscenium  (also  of  wood)  was  erected  before  the  parascenia 
and  the  intermediate  front  of  the  scene-building  (see  pp.  235  f., 
below),  and  painted  panels  of  scenery  could  be  fastened  between 
its  intercolumniations.  In  my  opinion,  we  must  suppose  that 
such  a  proscenium  stood  far  enough  removed  from  the  front  of 
the  scene-building'  so  that,  when  there  was  no  occasion  to  fill  the 
intercolumniations  with  panels,  a  porch  or  portico  was  auto- 
matically produced  (its  floor  probably  raised  a  step  or  two  above 
the  orchestra  level),  in  which  semi-interior  scenes  might  be 
enacted  (see  pp.  238  f.,  below).  It  has  even  been  maintained 
that  a  projecting  vestibule  was  sometimes  built  out  from  the 
center  of  the  proscenium  in  order  to  provide  additional  space  of  a 
semi-private  sort  (see  pp.  236  f.,  below  and  Fig.  73).  Of  course, 
no  foundations  for  such  a  structure  are  found  either  at  this  period 
or  subsequently,  for  the  reason  that  permanent  foundations  for 
something  which  was  only  occasionally  employed  would  have 
been  unsightly  and  in  the  way  for  the  greater  part  of  the  time. 
No  fragments  belonging  to  the  orchestra  of  this  period  have  been 
discovered  (see  next  paragraph  and  p.  73).  Moreover,  the  seat- 
ing arrangements  belong  to  the  Lycurgus  theater  of  the  next 
century.  Fortunately,  however,  there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the 
relative  position  of  these  parts:  it  is  apparent  that  the  whole 
theater  has  been  pushed  about  thirty-five  feet  farther  north 
(Fig.  81),  and  the  causes  of  this  alteration  are  not  hard  to  guess. 
In  the  first  place,  room  was  thus  secured  for  the  scene-building 
without  occupying  the  space  immediately  in  front  of  the  earlier 
temple  of  Dionysus.  In  the  second  place,  the  slope  of  the 
AcropoUs  could  now  be  employed  more  extensively  as  a  support 
for  the  seats  of  the  spectators,  see  Fig.  81.  There  is  now  good 
reason  for  believing  that  this  shght  change  in  site  was  made  at 
this  period,  see  p.  342,  below. 

Slight  as  may  seem  the  theater  remains  which  have  been 
discussed  up  to  this  point,  it  must  be  noted  before  proceeding 

'  As  in  the  Hellenistic  theater  (Fig.  38). 


^  ■  -^&  \ 


Cofyri^kt,  Underwood  &■  Under-cood 


Fig.  36 

THEATER   OF  DIONYSUS   IN   ATHENS,   LOOKING   NORTH;   CHOREGIC 
MONUMENT  OF  THR.\SYLLUS  IN  THE   BACKGROUND 


I 


Cofyrii;ht,  UiidLywocid  &■  Undcriuood 


Fig.  37 


THEATER  OF  DIONYSUS  IN  ATHENS,  LOOKING  NORTH  AND  WEST 


INTRODUCTION  69 

that  they  entirely  exhaust  the  field.  There  is  not  a  stone  outside 
of  Athens  which  can  be  assigned  to  any  Greek  theater  before 
400  B.c.^  Yet  all  the  plays  of  Aeschylus,  Sophocles,  and  Eurip- 
ides, and  all  the  extant  comedies  of  Aristophanes,  except  two, 
were  performed  before  this  date !  In  the  latter  half  of  the  fourth 
century  Lycurgus,  who  was  finance  minister  of  Athens  between 
338  and  326  B.C.,  "completed"^  the  theater  which  is  reproduced 
so  clearly  in  Dorpf eld's  plan  (Fig.  32)  that  it  is  unnecessary  to 
describe  it  at  length.  Most  of  the  stone  remains  now  upon  the 
site  belong  to  this  structure.  So  far  as  the  auditorium  is  pre- 
served, its  arrangements  and  furnishings  are  almost  entirely 
those  of  Lycurgus'  time.  Most  of  the  inclosing  walls,  the  stone 
thrones  in  the  front  row  for  the  use  of  dignitaries,  and  the  stone 
seats  for  the  rest  of  the  audience  all  belong  to  this  period 
(Fig.  36).  The  only  part  of  the  present  orchestra  which  goes 
back  to  the  fourth  century  is  the  gutter  just  inside  the  balustrade 
(Fig.  37) ,  but  this  is  sufl&cient  to  show  that  the  Lycurgus  orchestra 
was  sixty-four  feet  and  four  inches  in  diameter  or  exactly  sixty 
Greek  feet.  This  figure  is  significant  as  showing  that  the  orches- 
tra was  the  starting-point  in  the  measurements  and  not  inciden- 
tally derived  from  some  other  part  of  the  theater.  Behind  the 
orchestra  and  upon  the  old  foundations  was  now  erected  a 
scene-building  of  stone,  one  hundred  and  fifty-two  feet  in  breadth 
and  twenty-one  feet  deep  at  its  shallowest  part.  About  its 
parascenia  stood  a  row  of  stone  columns,  from  which  it  can  be 
estimated  that  the  first  story  was  about  thirteen  feet  in  height. 
But  the  stone  connecting  columns  which  Dorpf  eld  restored  before 
the  centralpart  of  the  scene-building  (Fig.  32)  have  been  assailed 
on  every  hand  and  have  now  been  relinquished  by  their  sponsor.^ 
This  part  of  the  proscenium  was  still  of  wood,  for  though  the 
scenic  requirements  by  this  time  were  fairly  standardized  for 
each  genre,  the  conventional  setting  for  tragedy  was  quite 

^  Except  possibly  at  Thoricus  (see  p.  103,  below). 

*  Cf.  pseudo-Plutarch  X  Oratorum  Vitae,  841D  and  852C. 

3  Cf.  Dorpfeld,  "Das  Theater  von  Ephesos,"  Jahrbuch  d.  arch.  Instituts, 
Anzeiger,  XXVIII  (1913),  38. 


7© 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


different  from  that  for  comedy  or  satyric  drama.  Furthermore, 
the  Greeks  seem  to  have  been  slow  to  lose  the  notion  that  a 
wooden  background  was  necessary  in  order  to  secure  the  best 
acoustic  results/  This  wooden  proscenium  probably  did  not 
stand  so  close  to  the  scene-building  as  the  drawing  would  indi- 
cate, but  formed  a  portico  as  in  the  Hellenistic  theater  (Fig.  38). 
At  the  same  time,  or  possibly  at  the  close  of  the  fifth  century, 
a  colonnade  was  built  just  behind  the  scene-building  as  a  place 
of  refuge  from  heat  and  sudden  showers.  There  are  two  con- 
siderations which  make  the  Lycurgus  theater  highly  important 
to  us:  in  the  first  place,  here  were  produced  the  plays  of  the 
Greek  New  Comedy  which  furnished  the  originals  of  Plautus' 
and  Terence's  Latin  plays  and  which  has  partially  been  restored 
to  us  by  the  recent  discovery  of  large  fragments  of  Menander's 
comedies;  and  in  the  second  place  this  fourth-century  structure 
probably  reproduced  in  stone  the  main  outlines  of  the  earlier 
theater  in  which  the  later  tragedies  of  Sophocles  and  Euripides 
and  all  the  plays  of  Aristophanes  were  performed  (pp.  339  ff.). 
This  supposition  is  strengthened  by  the  fact  that  the  extant  fifth- 
century  dramas  could  readily  be  "  staged  "  in  the  Lycurgus  theater. 
"**  Further  alterations  were  made  in  the  Athenian  theater 
during  the  first  or  second  century  B.C.  (Fig,  38).^  So  far  as  can 
now  be  established,  this  Hellenistic  theater  differed  from  its 
immediate  predecessor  only  in  two  particulars.  The  front  of  the 
parascenia  was  moved  back  about  six  and  a  quarter  feet,^  the 
parodi  being  thereby  enlarged  to  the  same  extent.  What 
advantage  was  gained  by  this  alteration  has  not  yet  been  dis- 
covered. The  other  change  consisted  in  the  erection,  at  last, 
of  a  stone  proscenium,  about  thirteen  feet  in  height,  between 
the  parascenia  and  about  six  and  a  half  feet  in  front  of  the 
central  fore  wall  of  the  scene-building.  At  Epidaurus,  Oropus, 
Delos,  etc.,  the  supports  cf  the  proscenium  were  only  half- 

Dorpfeld,  "Das  Theater  von  Ephesos,"  Tahrbuch  d.  arch.  Instituts,  Anzeiger, 
XXVni(i9i3),4of. 

"  Fig.  38  is  taken  from  Dorpfeld-Reisch,  Das  griechische  Theater,  Fig.  26. 
3  Cf.  ibid.,  p.  63.     This  shift  has  been  disputed  by  many  but  is  defended  by 
Fiechter,  op.  cit.,  pp.  9  g. 


^^ITRODUCTION 


71 


columns,  and  sometimes  they  had  grooves  or  rims  running  verti- 
cally along  their  sides  cr  had  the  rear  half  of  the  column  cut  into 
an  oblong  for  the  purpose  of  providing  a  firmer  fastening  for  the 
painted  panels  (TrlvaKes)   in  the  intercolumniations  (Fig.  72). 


Fig.  38. — Ground  Plan  of  the  Hellenistic  Theater  in  Athens  According  to 
Dorpfeld. 

See  p.  70,  n.  2 

But  at  Athens  the  proscenium  columns  were  whole  and  were  not 
equipped  with  any  of  these  devices. 

We  have  already  passed  far  beyond  the  time  when  master- 
pieces of  Greek  drama  were  receiving  their  premier  performances 
in  the  Athenian  theater;  after  the  third  century  the  dramatic 
productions  in  Attica  were  no  longer  of  consequence.  Yet  for 
the  sake  of  completeness  it  will  be  necessary  to  record  briefly 
two  later  periods  in  the  history  of  this  structure. 


72  THE  GREEK  THEATER  ANf  ITS  DRAMA 

The  result  of  the  earlier  of  these  reniOdelments  is  commonly 
known  as  Nero's  theater,  for  the  reason  that  its  fagade  originally 
bore  an  inscription  of  dedication  to  Dionysus  and  Nero.  The 
motive  for  the  alteration  and  dedication  is  doubtless  to  be  found 
in  the  Emperor's  visit  to  Greece  and  "artistic"  triumphs  there  in 
67  A.D.  Under  the  circumstances  it  is  not  surprising  that  two 
features  of  Roman  theaters  were  now  for  the  first  time  introduced 
into  Athens:  a  stage  was  built  before  the  scene-building,  and 
the  hitherto  full  orb  of  the  orchestral  circle  was  thereby  infringed 
upon.  At  the  back  of  the  stage  rose  a  new  proscenium,  probably 
no  longer  in  the  form  of  a  straight  and  simple  colonnade  but  an 
elaborate  facade  with  projecting  and  receding  members,  such  as 
was  common  in  the  Roman  and  Graeco-Roman  theaters  (Figs. 
40  and  59),  The  depth  of  the  stage  cannot  be  exactly  deter- 
mined,^ but  its  front  wall  is  usually  thought  to  have  coincided 
with  that  of  the  stage  now  standing,  which  belongs  to  the  next 
period.  But  we  shall  presently  find  reasons  for  believing  that, 
though  the  Nero  stage  was  deeper  than  the  Hellenistic  pro- 
scenium, it  was  shallower  than  the  later  (Phaedrus)  stage  (see 
pp.  75  and  99,  below).  Space  would  thus  be  left  for  the  parodi 
still  to  lead  directly  into  the  orchestra.  Dorpfeld  first  estimated 
the  height  of  the  Neronian  stage  at  about  four  feet  nine  and  a 
half  inches  (see  next  paragraph),  but  is  now  inclined  to  think 
that  it  belonged  to  the  high  Graeco-Roman  type.*  In  my 
judgment,  however,  his  earlier  position  is  to  be  preferred.  I 
consider  it  probable  that  stone  steps  led  from  the  orchestra  to 
the  center  of  the  stage,  as  in  the  Phaedrus  theater  (Fig.  40). 
Just  outside  the  gutter  of  the  Lycurgus  theater  was  erected  a 
marble  balustrade  (Fig.  39)  ,3  which  stood  about  three  and  a  half 

'  Cf.  Dorpfeld,  Das  griechische  Theater,  p.  89. 

*  Cf.  ibid.,  p.  89;  Athenische  Mittheilungen,  XXII  (1897),  459;  XXIII  (1898), 
330  and  347;  and XXVIII  (1903),  414.  For  the  Graeco-Roman  stage  see  pp.  80  ff. 
and  iiof.,  below. 

'  Fig.  39  is  from  a  photograph  taken  by  Dr.  Lewis  L.  Forman  and  furnished 
by  Dr.  A.  S.  Cooley.  Owing  to  its  change  of  function,  in  Roman  times  the  orches- 
tra was  sometimes  known  as  the  Kovlffrpa  ( =  the  Latin  arena) ;  owing  to  its  change 
of  shape,  it  was  sometimes  called  <riyfia  from  its  resemblance  to  the  semicircular 
form  of  the  Greek  letter  C . 


-^-— Jgi^" 


.m 


.> 


luG.  3g.— Nero  Balustrade  and  Pavement,  and  i'liaedrus  Stage  of  the  Theater 

in  Athens. 

See  p.  72,  n.  3 


Fig.  41. — Frieze  of  the  Phaedrus  Stage  in  Athens 
See  p.  74,  n-  2 


INTRODUCTION 


73 


feet  above  the  orchestra  level  and  protected  the  spectators  from 
accident  when  gladiatorial  combats  (another  Roman  institution) 
or  the  like  were  being  exhibited  in  the  orchestra.  In  order  to 
compensate  for  the  curtailment  of  the  orchestra  by  the  stage, 
the  gutter,  which  had  been  left  open  except  opposite  the  vertical 


Fig.  40. — Plan  of  the  Romanized  Theater  in  Athens  According  to  Dorpfeld 

See  p.  74,  n.  i 

aisles  of  the  auditorium,  was  covered  over,  except  for  occasional 
rosette-shaped  openings.  Up  to  this  time  the  orchestra  seems 
to  have  had  no  covering  but  hard-pressed  earth,  but  it  was  now 
paved  with  marble  slabs.  In  the  middle  of  the  pavement  is  a 
rhomboid  design  (Fig.  40) ,  and  in  its  central  block  is  a  depression 
about  twenty  inches  in  diameter,  by  means  of  which  an  altar  of 
Dionysus  (the  thymele)  was  doubtless  held  in  place. 


74  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

The  final  alterations  in  the  Athenian  theater  (Fig.  40)'  were 
J  made  in  the  third  or  fourth  century  a.d.  by  Phaedrus,  governor  of 
Attica  ('Ar^tSos  apxos),  who  dedicated  the  "platform  of  the 
theater"  {^rnxa.  derjTpov)  to  Dionysus  in  an  inscription  which  still 
stands  on  the  uppermost  of  the  stone  steps  leading  from  the 
orchestra  to  the  stage.  The  gutter  was  now  filled  up  with  earth 
and  refuse,  and  the  rosette-shaped  openings  in  its  covering  were 
carefully  closed.  Plaster  was  used  as  needed,  and  the  balustrade 
and  the  front  wall  of  the  stage  (the  hyposcenium)  were  reinforced 
and  made  water-tight  by  supporting  walls.  The  intention  was 
plainly  to  enable  the  orchestra  to  be  flooded  for  the  represen- 
tation of  mimic  sea  fights.  The  stage  was  partially  rebuilt 
and  was  lowered.  The  hyposcenium  was  adorned  with  a  frieze 
(Figs.  39  and  41),^  the  extant  portion  of  which  is  interrupted  at 
three  points  by  as  many  niches  as  recesses,  one  of  which  is 
filled  by  a  kneeling  Silenus.  It  is  clear  that  the  frieze  had  been 
used  before  and  that  its  slabs  had  originally  been  placed  in 
immediate  juxtaposition.  Moreover,  the  heads  of  the  figures 
have  been  cut  away,  so  that  the  frieze,  when  complete,  must  have 
been  about  half  a  foot  higher  than  at  present.  The  Phaedrus 
stage  is  four  feet  three  and  a  half  inches  high;  and  as  Dorpfeld 
was  originally  inclined  to  beheve  that  this  same  frieze  had  at 
first  stood  before  the  Neronian  stage,  he  estimated  the  height  of 
the  latter  at  about  four  feet  nine  and  a  half  inches.  In  my 
opinion,  this  estimate  ought  to  be  retained.  But  though  Dorp- 
feld now  considers  the  Nero  stage  to  have  been  higher  than  this, 
he  has  not  indicated  whether  he  still  believes  its  front  wall  to 
have  been  the  original  position  of  the  frieze. 

It  has  been  suggested  that  after  the  lapse  of  two  centuries  or 
more  the  Neronian  stage  was  perhaps  in  need  of  repair  or  renewal 
and  that  the  changes  for  which  Phaedrus  was  responsible  are 
thus  to  be  explained.     However  that  may  be,  other  influences 

'  Fig.  40  is  taken  from  Dorpfeld-Reisch,  Das  griechische  Theater,  Fig.  32. 

=  Fig.  41  is  from  a  photograph  belonging  to  Northwestern  University;  the 
stone  steps  at  the  left  and  another  slab  at  the  right  do  not  appear  in  this  view  (see 
Fig-  39)-  For  the  latest  interpretation  and  drawing  of  the  frieze,  cf.  Cook,  Zeus,  I, 
708  ff.,  and  the  pocket  at  end  of  his  volume. 


INTRODUCTION  75 

were  plainly  at  work.  I  think  that  at  this  period  the  Athenian 
theater  was  at  last  thoroughly  Romanized.  That  is  to  say,  I 
think  that  the  Nero  stage  did  not  project  so  far  into  the  orchestra 
(see  p.  72,  above),  but  was  now  enlarged  so  as  to  accommodate 
all  the  performances,  and  that  at  the  same  time  the  Roman 
custom  of  placing  seats  in  the  orchestra  was  for  the  first  time 
introduced  into  Athens.  But  in  order  that  the  orchestra  might 
find  occasional  continuance  of  its  function  as  a  place  of  ex- 
hibition, or  possibly  because  of  interest  in  the  sport  per  se,  all  _ 
openings  were  closed  up  and  the  old  dancing  place  was  made 
capable  of  being  flooded.  It  follows  that  the  parodi  no  longer 
debouched  into  the  orchestra  but  led  to  steps  at  either  side  of 
the  stage,  as  shown  in  Fig.  40.  The  participants  in  the  mimic 
sea  fights  and  gladiatorial  combats  and  the  spectators  at  other 
performances  could  enter  the  orchestra  only  by  passing  over  the 
stage  and  down  the  front  steps.r  Of  course,  the  presence  of 
spectators  so  close  to  the  performers  would  permit  no  type  of 
stage  except  one  of  moderate  height;  evidently  even  the  low 
Nero  stage  was  a  little  too  high  under  these  conditions. 

The  foregoing  account  of  the  Athenian  theater  is  founded,  in 
the  main,  upon  Dorpfeld's  conclusions,  but  the  reader  needs  to 
be  warned  that  not  all  of  his  conclusions  are  acceptable  to 
everyone.  Until  about  half  a  century  ago  our  information 
concerning  Greek  theaters  was  largely  restricted  to  literary 
tradition.  There  was  no  theater  of  the  earlier  Greek  types  above 
ground,  and  even  the  exact  location  of  the  Athenian  theater  had 
been,  during  many  centuries,  forgotten.  The  literary  tradition 
was  mainly  derived  from  Vitruvius,  a  Roman  architect  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Christian  era,  who  devoted  two  chapters  of 
Book  V  in  his  work  On  Architecture  to  a  description  of  Greek 
and  Roman  theaters.  According  to  him,  the  front  and  back 
walls  of  the  Roman  stage  were  determined  by  the  diameter  of 
the  orchestral  circle  and  one  side  of  an  inscribed  equilateral 
triangle ;  in  other  words,  its  depth  would  be  one-half  the  radius 
of  the  orchestra  (Fig.  42).^    Its  height  was  not  to  exceed  five 

'  Fig.  42  is  taken  from  Alhenische  Mittheilungen,  XXII  (1897),  452. 


76         THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

feet/  since  all  the  performers  stood  on  the  stage  and  the  unele- 
vated  front  half  of  the  orchestral  circle  was  reserved  for  the  seats 
of  senators.  In  the  Greek  theater,  on  the  other  hand,  Vitruvius 
asserted  that  the  front  wall  of  the  stage  was  marked  by  one  side 
of  an  inscribed  square,  and  its  back  wall,  which  he  calls  the 


Fig.  42. — Vitruvius'  Theatrum  Latinum  According  to  Dorpfeld 

See  p.  75,  n.  i 

scaenaefrons,  by  the  parallel  tangent,  its  depth  being  thus  about 
three-tenths  of  the  radius  (Fig.  43).^  Its  height  was  to  range 
between  ten  and  twelve  feet.  Vitruvius  expressly  states  that 
this  stage  in  the  Greek  theater  was  called  a  logium,  that  the 

'  Vitruvius,  of  course,  speaks  of  Roman  feet,  which  are  equal  to  11 .65  English 
inches. 

*  Fig.  43  is  taken  from  Athenische  Mittheilungen,  XXII  (1897),  453.  This 
drawing  differs  somewhat  from  that  given  in  Das  griechische  Theater,  Fig.  66, 
which  was  prepared  while  Dorpfeld  was  still  of  the  opinion  that  Vitruvius  was 
describing  the  Hellenistic  theater  and  had  misapprehended  the  function  of  its 
proscenium  (see  p.  81,  below).  He  now  includes  the  proscenium  at  the  back  of  the 
stage  in  the  scaenae  frons. 


INTRODUCTION 


77 


tragic  and  comic  actors  performed  in  scaena^  and  the  "other 
artists"  per  orchestram,  and  that  for  this  reason  the  Greeks  drew 
a  distinction  between  the  adjectives  "scenic"  and  "thymehc"  as 
appHed  to  performances  and  performers.*  The  differences 
between   the   two   types  of   structure   are   obvious:     (i)    the 


Fig.  43. — Vitruvius'  Tkeairum  Graecorum  According  to  Dorpfeld 

See  p.  76,  n.  2 

auditorium  and  orchestra  in  Vitruvius'  Roman  theater  occupied 
exactly  a  semicircumference,  in  his  Greek  theater  distinctly 
more  than  this;  (2)  the  Roman  stage  was  deep  and  low,  the 
Greek  high  and  comparatively  shallow;  (3)  in  the  Greek  theater 
both    orchestra    and    stage    were    employed    (separately)    by 

'  Whatever  scaena  may  mean  in  Latin,  in  scaena  in  this  context  is  at  least 
equivalent  to  "on  the  stage." 

'  Cf.  p.  61,  n.  2,  above  and  pp.  96  f.,  below. 


78  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

different  forms  of  entertainment;  in  the  Roman  theater  all  per- 
formers stood  on  the  stage  and  the  semicircular  orchestra  was 
occupied  by  the  seats  of  senators. 

Moreover,  Pollux  (second  century  a.d.)  states  that  in  the 
Greek  theater  "the  ffKrjvrj  belongs  to  the  actors  and  the  orchestra 
to  the  chorus."^  Everyone  used  to  think  (and  some  still  do) 
that  aKTjvrf  here  signified  "stage"  and  that  Vitruvius'  reference  to 
scaenici  and  thymelici  was  to  be  interpreted  in  a  similar  fashion. 
Accordingly,  it  was  supposed  that  Greek  actors  performed 
(and  had  always  performed)  upon  a  ten-  or  twelve-foot  Vitruvian 
stage  and  the  dramatic  chorus  in  the  orchestra  below.  Con- 
firmation was  found  for  this  theory  in  Pollux'  further  mention  of 
ladders  rising  from  the  orchestra  to  the  (TK-qvi}.^  The  use  of  both 
orchestra  and  stage  is  mentioned  a  few  times  also  in  schoha 
(ancient  commentaries)  upon  the  Greek  plays.  The  possibility 
of  other  interpretations  of  these  passages  will  be  considered 
later  (see  pp.  97  ff.,  below).  For  the  present  this  should  be  said: 
We  are  interested  in  the  Greek  theater  mainly  because  of  Aeschy- 
lus, Sophocles,  Euripides,  and  Aristophanes,  all  of  whom  lived 
in  the  fifth  century  B.C.,  and  Pollux  and  Vitruvius,  who  flourished 
many  centuries  later,  nowhere  assert  that  they  are  attempting 
to  describe  the  theater  of  this  earHer  period.  Nevertheless,  this 
initial  assumption  used  tacitly  to  be  taken  for  granted,  and  these 
Procrustean  conditions  were  arbitrarily  imposed  upon  the  extant 
Greek  dramas  by  all  editors  and  commentators  alikef  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  such  a  difference  of  level  between  orchestra  and 
stage,  chorus  and  actors,  with  no  convenient  connection  between 
the  two,  presented  an  insuperable  obstacle  to  the  (imaginary) 
"staging"  of  the  fifth-century  plays.  Various  expedients  were 
proposed  to  evade  the  difficulty.  One  of  the  most  popular  was 
that  of  G.  Hermann,  who  in  1833  suggested  that  the  Greek 
orchestra  was  covered  with  a  wooden  platform  to  within  a  few 

'  Cf.  Pollux  Onomasticon  iv,  §  123:  Kal  a-KrjvT]  fiiv  vwokpltG>v  Idiov,  ^  5^  6px'n<^- 
rpa  rov  xopov, 

*  Cf.  ibid.,  iv,  §  127:  elaeXdbvrei  5k  /card  tt]v  opx'ficrTpav  iwl  ttjv  ffKrjviiv  ava^al- 

VOV<Tl  Sli,  Kkl/xdKWV. 


INTRODUCTION  79 

feet  of  the  stage  level  and  that  thus  a  more  intimate  connection 
between  the  two  was  estabhshed,  and  Wieseler  (1847)  proposed 
to  identify  this  platform  with  the  thymele.  Nonsensical  as  this 
suggestion  appears  to  everyone  without  exception  now,  it  enjoyed 
a  tremendous  vogue  for  some  time.  In  the  eighties  the  news 
began  to  seep  through  to  Western  Europe  and  this  country  that 
Dorpfeld  had  evolved  a  new  theory,  to  the  effect  that  actors  and 
chorus  had  performed  in  the  orchestra  on  the  same  level  until 
Roman  times/  Again,  Mr.  A.  E.  Haigh  (1889)  maintained  that 
a  low  stage  was  employed  uninterruptedly  until  the  fourth 
century  B.C.,  when  a  high  Vitruvian  stage  was  introduced. 
Dr.  Bethe  (1896)  contends  that  at  first  actors  and  chorus  per- 
formed in  the  orchestra  but  that  about  427  B.C.  a  low  stage  was 
introduced,  which  in  the  fourth  century  was  raised  to  the 
Vitruvian  level.  On  the  other  hand,  Dr.  Puchstein  (1901), 
who  stated  in  his  Preface  that  he  ignored  the  Hterary  evidence, 
argued  for  a  Vitruvian  stage  already  in  the  fifth  century.  And 
now  Professor  Fiechter  (1914)  has  given  his  adherence  to  Bethe's 
hypothesis  that  a  low  stage  at  the  end  of  the  fifth  century  was 
raised  to  a  high  one  in  the  fourth.  It  will  be  seen  that  all 
authorities  are  in  substantial  agreement  that  the  Greek  theater 
had  a  stage,  even  a  high  Vitruvian  stage,  but  they  are  hopelessly 
divided  with  regard  to  the  important  detail  as  to  when  this  stage 
was  introduced — at  the  very  first,  at  the  close  of  the  fifth  century, 
in  the  time  of  Lycurgus,  in  the  Hellenistic  period,  or  in  the  reign 
of  Nero. 

But  before  taking  up  the  question  of  the  stage  in  the  Greek 
theater,  it  will  first  be  necessary  to  determine  Vitruvius'  rela- 
tionship to  the  matter.  The  Roman  architect's  description  of 
the  Roman  theater  does  not  coincide  precisely  with  any  extant 
Roman  theater.  Nevertheless,  there  has  never  been  any  doubt 
as  to  the  general  type  of  structure  which  he  had  in  mind.     It  is 

'  Dorpfeld's  views  were  first  given  general  pmblicity  in  the  Appendix  to 
Miiller's  Lekrlmch  der  griechischen  Buhnenalterikumer  (1886),  pp.  415  f.,  but  were 
not  published  in  full  until  1896.  They  have  suffered  modification  in  several 
material  points  since  then. 


8o  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

evident,  however,  that  he  is  describing  no  particular,  actually 
existent,  theater  but  is  giving  directions  for  an  ideal  structure. 
Indeed,  he  declares:  ''Whoever  wishes  to  use  these  directions 
will  render  the  perfect  qualities  of  theaters  faultless."^  There 
is,  therefore,  no  reason  to  expect  that  his  directions  for  Greek 
theaters  would  agree  any  more  closely  with  any  extant  Greek 
theater,  and  in  fact  they  do  not.  During  the  last  two  decades 
of  the  nineteenth  century  the  ancient  theaters  at  Epidaurus, 
Oropus,  Thoricus,  Eretria,  Sicyon,  Megalopolis,  Delos,  Assus, 
Pergamum,  etc. ,  were  unearthed.  The  first  result  of  this  activity 
was  to  show  that  no  two  of  these  structures  were  entirely  alike 
and  that  none  exactly  corresponded  to  Vitruvius'  directions. 
Furthermore,  it  has  become  evident  that  all  ancient  theaters 
are  no  longer  to  be  classified  under  the  two  general  Vitruvian 
types,  "  Greek"  and  "Roman,"  but  rather  under  a  larger  number 
of  categories  according  to  time,  place,  and  conditions  of  use. 
But  the  question  which  one  of  these  types  Vitruvius  had  in 
mind  still  remains,  and  unfortunately  the  answer  has  not  been 
so  clear  as  to  compel  everyone's  acceptance.  In  Vitruvius'  day 
many  Hellenistic,  stageless  theaters  were  still  standing,  and  the 
modern  attempt  to  identify  these  with  Vitruvius'  Greek  type 
and  to  force  them  into  conformity  with  his  prescriptions  has 
wrought  great  confusion  in  the  field  of  scenic  antiquities.  But 
Vitruvius  nowhere  professes  to  be  writing  a  history  of  Greek 
theaters  nor  had  he  any  intention  of  presenting  antiquarian  lore. 
His  book  was  planned  for  distinctly  practical  purposes.  Now 
in  his  day  only  two  kinds  of  new  theaters  were  being  erected,  the 
Roman  and  what  Dorpfeld  has  christened  the  Graeco-Roman.* 
Dorpfeld  supposes  the  latter  type  to  have  originated  with  the 
theater  which  Pompey  had  built  in  Rome  in  55  B.C.  This  is 
said  to  have  been  modeled  upon  the  Greek  theater  at  Mitylene 

'  Cf.  De  Architectura  v.  8,  2:  "ita  his  praescriptionibus  qui  voluerit  uti,  emen- 
datas  efficiet  theatrorum  perfectiones." 

*  This  is  now  Dorpfeld's  name  for  what  he  at  first  called  the  Asia  Minor  t3T>e; 
cf.  Athenische  Millheilungen,  XXVHI  (1903),  389  and  414.  The  latter  term  was 
unfortunate  as  suggesting  a  geographical  restriction  which  had  no  basis  in  fact. 


INTRODUCTION  8l 

in  the  island  of  Lesbos/  and  Dorpfeld  supposes  that  the  orchestra 
of  Pompey's  theater  was  kept  free  of  seats,  after  the  Greek 
fashion,  and  devoted  to  thymelic  performances,  but  that  the 
top  of  the  proscenium,  despite  its  height  and  narrowness,  was 
converted  into  a  stage,  to  which,  according  to  Roman  practice, 
the  comic  and  tragic  actors  were  now  elevated.  However  this 
may  be,  the  fact  remains  that  from  about  this  time  theaters  of 
this  type  were  so  extensively  built  or  created  by  a  remodeling 
of  Hellenistic  theaters  that  they  became  the  only  rivals  of  purely 
Roman  structures.  Such  theaters  are  found  in  the  Nero  theater 
at  Athens  (according  to  Dorpfeld's  present  but  questionable 
view),  Pompeii,  Segesta,  Syracuse,  Taormina,  and  extensively 
in  Asia  Minor.  Early  in  the  nineteenth  century  Schonborn  and 
Wieseler  correctly  recognized  buildings  of  this  type  as  represent- 
ing Vitruvius'  Greek  theater.^  But  later  on,  when  the  earlier 
Greek  theaters  were  revealed  by  new  excavations  at  Athens  and 
elsewhere,  an  attempt  was  made  to  identify  these  with  Vitruvius' 
Greek  type.  Dorpfeld  himself  fell  into  this  error  and  in  Das 
griechische  Theater  maintained  that  Vitruvius  had  misunderstood 
the  function  of  the  Hellenistic  proscenium,  interpreting  as  a 
stage  what  in  fact  was  only  a  background.  But  though  Dorp- 
feld thus  incurred  a  large  share  of  blame  for  confusing  the 
situation,  he  soon  came  to  recognize  his  error  and  frankly 
recanted.^     Unhappily  the  pro-stage  writers  still  persist  in  it. 

It  might  be  supposed  that  Vitruvius'  Greek  theater  could 
readily  be  identified  by  comparing  his  directions  for  the  height 
and  depth  of  the  stage  with  the  actual  measurements  of  various 
Greek  theaters.  Dorpfeld  and  Fiechter  have  both  attempted 
this  but  without  any  great  success,''    For  the  sake  of  convenience 

■  Cf .  Plutarch  Life  of  Pompey,  c.  xlii. 

*  It  is  significant  that  Vitruvius  seems  to  have  depended  upon  Asia  Minor 
rather  than  the  Greek  mainland  for  his  knowledge  of  Greek  architecture;  cf. 
Noack,  "Das  Proscenion  in  der  Theaterfrage,"  Philologus,  LVIII  (1899),  16  ff. 

*  Cf.  Athenische  Mittheilungen,  XXII  (1897),  439  ff. 

*  Cf.  Athenische  Mittheilungen,  XXII  (1897),  443,  449  f.,  and  454,  and  Fiechter, 
op.  cit.,  pp.  59  ff. 


82 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


and  clearness  I  have  drawn  up  their  figures  in  the  form  of  tables. 
Dorpfeld  cited  six  Graeco-Roman  structures  as  afl&rmative 
arguments  and  two  Hellenistic  buildings  as  negative  arguments. 
Of  course,  the  figures  for  the  Hellenistic  theaters  refer  to  the 


TABLE  I  (Dorpfeld) 


Buildings 

Radius  of 
Orchestra 

Three-tenths  of 
Radius 

Depth  of  Stage  or 
Proscenium 

Height  of  Stage  or 
Proscenium 

Graeco-Roman : 

Termessus 

Sagalassus 

Patara 

Myra 

Tralles 

1 1 . OO  m. 
12.75  m. 
11.85  ™- 
17.50  m. 

3.30  m. 
3 .  80  m. 
3-55  m. 
5.20  m. 

about  4 .00  m. 
5  •  70  m. 
3  •  SO  m. 
3Som. 

2.45  m. 
2.77  m. 
2.50  m. 

about  3 . 00  m. 
at  least  2.30m. 

Magnesia  (rebuilt) 
Hellenistic: 

Eretria 

2 .  40  m. 
1.95  m. 

Oropus 

TABLE  II  (Fiechter) 


Buildings 


Radius  of 
Orchestra 


From  Center 

of  Orchestra 

to  Scaenae 

Frons 


Three-tenths 
of  Radius 


Depth  of  Stage 
or  Proscenium 


Height  of 

Stage  or 

Proscenium 


Hellenistic : 
Priene . . , 
Ephesus . 
Delos 


Magnesia . 


Graeco-Roman: 
Termessus.  .  . 
Sagalassus.  .  . 

Patara 

Tralles 


Magnesia    (re- 
built) 
Ephesus  (rebuilt) 


9.32  m. 

12.33  m. 

about 

10.55  m. 


9.31m. 
12.25  m. 

10.60  m. 


2 .  79  m. 
3.69  m. 

3. 16  m. 


2 .  74  m. 

3 .  60  m. 


9.90  m. 
12.73  m. 
11.85  m. 
13 . 20  m. 

10.65  ni- 

14.47  m. 


1 2 . 60  m. 
17.94  m. 
14.50  m. 


12.50  m. 


2.97  m. 
3 .  80  m. 
3-5Sm. 
3.96  m. 

3 .  20  m. 

4.34  m. 


4.00-5.5 m. 
7  5401. 
6 .  00  m. 
6.50  m. 

6.00  m. 

6.00-9.00  m, 


2.72  m. 
2.62  m. 


3.00  m. 

more  than 

2 .  30  m. 


2.77  m. 
2.50  m. 
at  least 
2 .  50  m. 
more  than 
2.30  m. 
2.62  m. 


proscenium,  in  which  some  would  recognize  a  stage.  The 
problem,  therefore,  is  not  merely  as  to  what  type  of  Greek  theater 
Vitruvius  was  describing,  but  the  function  of  the  proscenium 
in  Hellenistic  theaters  is  also  involved.  On  the  other  hand, 
Fiechter,  whose  object  is  diametrically  opposed  to  Dorpfeld's, 


INTRODUCTION  83 

cites  four  Hellenistic  and  six  Graeco-Roman  theaters  as  positive 
and  negative  arguments  respectively. 

It  will  be  observed  that  five  theaters  appear  in  both  tables,  and 
that  for  three  of  them  the  figures  do  not  altogether  agree.  This 
is  to  be  explained  as  due  to  differences  in  the  manner  of  taking 
the  measurements.  Thus,  for  Termessus,  Fiechter  gives  for  the 
depth  4  m.  (Dorpf eld's  figure)  and  5.5m.  Similarly,  for  Ephe- 
sus  he  gives  6  m.  and  9  m.,  and  explains  that  the  former  does  not 
include  the  socle  projections.  Evidently  Fiechter  still  beHeves 
that  the  scaenae  frons  in  Vitruvius'  description  of  the  Greek 
theater  ran  behind  the  proscenium  and  did  not  include  it  (see 
p.  76,  n.  2,  above).  The  same  difference  of  interpretation  prob- 
ably accounts  for  6  m.  (Fiechter)  and  3  .  50  m.  (Dorpfeld)  being 
reported  as  the  depth  of  the  stage  at  Patara. 

A  similar  opportunity  for  variance  of  measurement  occurs 
also  in  connection  with  the  orchestra.  In  my  opinion,  Vitruvius 
used  this  term  in  its  broadest  sense,  viz.,  as  including  all  the 
space  between  the  lowest  tier  of  seats^  (Fig.  43).  Fiechter's 
measurement  of  the  Hellenistic  orchestra  at  Priene  is  given  on 
this  basis.  Sometimes,  however,  the  term  is  used  with  reference 
to  the  space  bounded  by  the  gutter.^  Fiechter  states  that  this 
was  his  method  in  measuring  the  Hellenistic  orchestras  at  Ephe- 
sus  and  Delos.  The  discrepancy  in  the  reports  concerning  the 
orchestra  at  Termessus  (9 .  90  m.  and  1 1  m.)  is  also  to  be  explained 
thus. 

But  whatever  allowance  may  be  made  for  variations  of  this 
sort,  I  think  that  whoever  impartially  examines  these  figures 
with  the  expectation  of  obtaining  a  clear  answer  to  the  problem 

'  It  is  easy  to  see  why  he  should  do  so.  When  Hellenistic  theaters  were  made 
over  into  Graeco-Roman  structures,  several  rows  of  seats  were  often  removed, 
resulting  in  a  drop  of  several  feet  between  the  auditorium  and  the  orchestra  (see 
p.  116,  below,  and  Fig.  24).  So  distinct  a  line  of  demarcation  could  scarcely  be 
ignored  in  favor  of  any  less  clearly  marked  boundary.  In  fact,  the  orchestra  in 
the  narrowest  sense  (see  next  note)  was  sometimes  not  indicated  at  aU  in  the 
Graeco-Roman  theaters. 

'  The  word  is  applied  also  to  a  still  more  restricted  space  which  in  some  Graeco- 
Roman  and  most  earUer  theaters  is  marked  off  by  a  circular  boimdary. 


84  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

involved  will  be  doomed  to  disappointment,  Vitruvius'  Greek 
stage  should  range  between  ten  and  twelve  feet  (Roman)  in 
height,  or  2.959m.  and  3.55m.,  respectively.  Only  one 
Graeco-Roman  stage  and  one  Hellenistic  proscenium  in  both 
tables  fall  within  these  limits.^  On  the  other  hand,  though 
Dorpfeld  is  clearly  right  in  maintaining  that  the  proscenia  at 
Eretria  and  Oropus  are  too  shallow  to  accommodate  the  entire 
histrionic  action  of  a  play,  Fiechter  makes  it  appear  that  Vitru- 
vius' rule  that  the  stage  of  the  Greek  theater  should  be  about 
three-tenths  of  the  orchestra  radius  in  depth  is  satisfied  more 
closely  by  the  Hellenistic  prosrenium  than  by  the  Graeco-Roman 
stage.  It  should  be  emphasized,  however,  that  he  obtains  this 
result  only  by  shifting  the  value  of  the  word  "orchestra,"  taking 
it  now  in  the  largest  and  now  in  a  narrower  sense. 

Fiechter  has  tried  to  utilize  Vitruvius'  diagram  still  further 
by  pointing  out  that  in  Vitruvius'  Greek  theater  the  distance 
from  the  center  of  the  orchestra  to  the  front  wall  of  the  stage 
(the  hyposcenium)  plus  the  depth  of  the  stage,  i.e.,  the  distance 
from  the  center  of  the  orchestra  to  the  scaenae  frons,  ought  to 
equal  one  radius  (Fig.  43).  The  figures  in  the  first  two  columns 
of  his  table  apparently  show  that  this  condition  is  met  by  the 
Hellenistic  theaters  and  is  not  met  by  the  Graeco-Roman 
theaters.  But  here  again  we  encounter  a  variable  quantity 
caused  by  a  dispute  as  to  whether  the  proscenium  is  to  be  counted 
a  part  of  the  scaenae frons  (see  above).  In  the  Patara  theater  the 
distance  from  the  center  of  the  orchestra  to  the  hyposcenium  is 
8 .  50  m.  (14 .  50  m.—  6. 00  m.,  Fiechter's  figures),  and  the  depth  of 
the  stage  according  to  Dorpfeld,  who  measures  from  the  pro- 
scenium, is  3.50m.  Therefore,  the  total  distance  is  12m.  as 
against  a  radius  of  11 .85  m.     Again,  in  the  Termessus  theater 

'  Of  course,  Dorpfeld  and  Fiechter  cite  only  a  fraction  of  the  instances  available 
(others  are  given  in  Puchstein's  table,  op.  ciL,  p.  7),  but  it  is  to  be  inferred  that  they 
bring  forward  those  which  are  most  favorable  to  their  own  position  and  most 
difficult  for  their  opponents  to  explain.  For  example,  the  prosceniimi  of  the 
Hellenistic  theater  in  Athens  was  about  thirteen  feet  (English)  high,  which  exceeds 
Vitruvius'  maximum.  Consequently  Fiechter  says  nothing  about  it.  In  general, 
the  Hellenistic  proscenia  were  higher  than  the  Graeco-Roman  stages. 


INTRODUCTION  85 

the  distance  from  the  center  of  the  orchestra  to  the  hyposcenium 
is  7  .  10  m,  (12 .  60  m.—  5  .  50  m.,  Fiechter's  J&gures),  and  the  depth 
of  the  stage  is  4  m.  according  to  Dorpfeld,  measuring  as  before. 
Therefore,  the  total  distance  is  11  .lom.  as  against  a  radius  of 
II  m.  according  to  the  largest  (Vitruvian)  measure  of  the  orches- 
tra. These  correspondences  are  close  enough  so  as  not  to  be 
unworthy  of  comparison  with  those  obtained  by  Fiechter. 

In  my  opinion,  the  net  result  of  the  above  must  be  the  frank 
recognition  that  such  data  concerning  the  Greek  theaters  as  are 
at  present  known  to  us  do  not  afford  convincing  proof  as  to  the 
type  which  Vitruvius  was  describing.  Nor  need  this  conclusion 
surprise  us,  if  we  accept  Dorpfeld's  theory  that  Pompey's 
theater  was  the  first  example  of  the  Graeco-Roman  type.  We 
have  no  information  concerning  the  Mitylene  theater,  upon 
which  Pompey's  building  was  modeled,  nor  concerning  the 
number  or  extent  of  its  departures  from  that  model.  But  any 
theater  in  Asia  Minor  at  that  time  must  have  belonged  to  the 
Hellenistic  type.  Consequently,  a  certain  resemblance  between 
Hellenistic  and  Graeco-Roman  theaters  was  inevitable.  If 
Vitruvius  was  describing  an  old  type,  viz.,  the  Hellenistic,  its 
variations  in  regard  to  the  particulars  just  discussed  must  have 
been  too  great  for  him  to  be  able  to  find  any  single  formula  which 
would  comprehend  them  all,  and  he  had  to  content  himself  with 
recording  a  theoretical  ideal.  Or  if  he  was  describing  a  con- 
temporaneous but  developing  type,  viz.,  the  Graeco-Roman,  we 
must  suppose  that  his  authority  was  not  sufficient  to  secure  the 
adoption  of  his  rules  by  later  architects. 

Are  we,  then,  unable  to  determine  which  type  of  Greek 
theater  was  the  subject  of  Vitruvius'  discussion  ?  I  think  that 
we  can,  but  that  we  must  depend  upon  other  arguments.  I 
mention  a  few  of  the  many  which  have  been  advanced:  (a) 
In  the  Hellenistic  and  earher  Greek  theaters  the  orchestra,  in 
the  narrowest  sense  (see  p.  83,  n.  2,  above),  usually  formed  a 
complete  circle,  or  at  least,  if  its  boundary  was  not  actually 
continued  into  a  complete  circle,  there  was  room  for  one  without 
infringing  upon  the  proscenium.     Examples  of  this  are  found  at 


86  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

Epidaurus  (Fig.  46),  Athens  (Fig.  38),  Eretria  (Fig.  53),  Oropus 
(Fig.  56),  Magnesia,  Piraeus,  etc.  Fiechter  denies  this  {op.  cit., 
p.  65),  but  only  because  he  chooses  to  understand  the  word 
"orchestra"  in  a  larger  sense.  Now  though  Vitruvius  used  the 
term  in  the  largest  sense  (measured  from  the  lowest  seats,  see 
p.  83,  above)  he  nowhere  informs  us  what  relative  size  the  most 
restricted  orchestra  should  or  might  have  as  compared  with 
the  largest  space  passing  under  that  name.^  But  his  directions 
require  the  stage  to  intrude  so  far  upon  his  orchestra  that  it  is 
apparent  that,  if  the  same  proportions  were  to  be  observed  as  in 
the  Hellenistic  theaters,  there  could  be  no  such  full  orchestra 
with  a  smaller  diameter.  This  is  also  true  of  Graeco-Roman 
structures,  and  in  this  important  respect  they  resemble  Vitruvius' 
Greek  theater  and  the  Hellenistic  theaters  do  not. 

h)  The  logium  of  Graeco-Roman  theaters  is  never  supported 
by  columns  along  its  front  wall.  The  only  exception  to  this 
statement  is  found  at  Priene  (Figs.  63  f.),  where  the  columns  of  the 
Hellenistic  proscenium  were  left  standing  when  the  theater  was 
remodeled.  The  reason  why  columns  were  not  set  in  this  place 
is  obvious — the  floor  of  the  Graeco-Roman  stage  naturally  was 
thought  of  as  representing  earth  or  a  street  and  it  was  mani- 
festly improper  for  either  to  be  supported  on  columns.^  On  the 
contrary,  so  fundamental  an  aesthetic  principle  would  have  been 
violated  if  the  actors  had  regularly  appeared  upon  the  top  of  the 
Hellenistic  proscenium.  But  there  is  no  doubt  that  Vitruvius' 
Greek  theater  had  a  stage  for  actors.  It  is,  therefore,  more 
likely  that  this  corresponds  to  the  Graeco-Roman  logium  than 
to  the  colonnade-like  proscenium  of  the  Hellenistic  theaters. 
Moreover,  the  columns  of  the  Hellenistic  proscenia  were  in  some 
cases  unmistakably  equipped  to  hold  painted  panels.  But  if 
the  actors  had  stood  on  top  of  the  Hellenistic  proscenium, 
this  scenery  would  have  been  beneath  their  feet  and  not  behind 
them! 

'  Doubtless  for  the  reason  that  in  the  pitlike  Graeco-Roman  orchestra  the 
small^  circle  really  was  not  needed  and  often  was  not  indicated  (see  p.  83,  n.  i). 
»  Cf.  Dorpfeld,  Athenische  Mittheilungen,  XXVIII  (1903),  403  and  405. 


INTRODUCTION  87 

c)  Vitruvius  discussed  the  theatrum  Latinum  in  chapter  6  of 
his  fifth  book  and  his  theatrum  Graecorum  in  chapter  7.  The 
former  chapter  is  longer  than  the  latter  by  more  than  a  half,  and 
the  latter  begins  with  these  words :  *'  In  the  theaters  of  the  Greeks 
not  all  things  are  to  be  done  in  the  same  way"  (as  in  the  Roman 
theaters).  The  implication  is  plain  that  some  of  the  directions 
in  chapter  6  are  to  be  understood  as  applying  also  to  the  Greek 
theater  of  chapter  7,  and  of  course  the  particulars  involved 
would  be  those  which  are  not  modified  by  the  discussion  in 
chapter  7.  One  of  these  is  the  injunction  that,  for  acoustic 
reasons,  the  roof  of  the  portico  at  the  top  of  the  auditorium  shall 
be  of  the  same  height  as  the  scene-building  (v.  6.  4).  The 
scene-building  is  never  built  so  high  as  this  in  Hellenistic  theaters, 
but  the  rule  is  often  observed  in  Graeco-Roman  and  purely 
Roman  theaters/ 

Dorpfeld  has  advanced  several  other  arguments  bearing  upon 
this  problem,^  but  in  my  opinion  those  just  mentioned  are 
sufl&cient.  Now  if  Vitruvius'  Greek  theater  is  to  be  identified 
with  the  Graeco-Roman  structures  dating  from  just  before  the 
beginning  of  the  Christian  era,  it  becomes  impossible  to  cite 
Vitruvius  in  support  of  a  stage  or  the  use  of  the  proscenium  as  a 
stage  in  Greek  theaters  of  Hellenistic  or  earlier  times.  It  will 
be  necessary,  therefore,  to  turn  back  to  the  fifth  century  and 
.^jamine  without  prejudice  the  conflicting  claims  with  reference 
to  the  presence  or  absence  of  a  stage  at  that  period.  Our  dis- 
cussion of  the  extant  theatrical  remains  of  that  century  has 
already  made  it  plain  that  there  is  nothing  in  them  which  can  be 
employed^JoIpniveliEat  there  was  a  stage  for  the  exclusive  use 

of    actors.  .^Ut   fnrtnnatpry^fhe   panrity    nf   siirh    evidenrp;   js 
compensated  for  by  the  preservation  of  forty-odd  tragedies  and 


comedies  of  this  period.     A  leading  by-product  of  the  stage 


'  Cf.  BetEe,  Jahrbuch  d.  arch.  Instituts,  XV  (1900),  71  f.,  and  'DoTpield,  ibid., 
XVI  (1901),  35  f- 

'  Cf.  Athenische  Mittheilungen,  XXVIII  (1903),  4245.  The  arguments 
advanced  in  this  article  are  reaflBrmed  as  still  valid  in  Jahrbuch  d.  arch.  Instituts, 
Anzeiger,  XXX  (1915),  99  ff. 


88  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

controversy  has  been  the  recognition  of  the  fact  that  these  plays 
are  not  only  to  be  taken  into  consideration  together  with  other 
cvidencTEut  thatthey  must  belhe  final  test  of  all  theories  based 
on  evidence  drawn  irgm  other  sources.  If  a  given  theory  will 
not  permit  these  plays  to  be  "staged"  easily  and  naturally^fhat 
"theory  ipso  facto  falls  to  the  ground.  As  von  Wilamowitz 
wrote:  "Von  dem,  was  in  den  Stiicken  selbst  steht,  lasst  sich 
nichts  abdingen."^  Whatever  judgment  may  ultimately  be 
formulated  with  respect  to  Dorpfeld's  contributions  to  scemc 
antiquities,  one  of  his  principal  achievements  must  ever  be 
recognized  as  the  minute,  searching,  and  unprejudiced  re- 
examination of  the  plays  themselves  which  he  provoked. 

An  illuminating  exemplification  of  the  use  that  may  be  made 
of  the  plays  in  the  study  of  such  problems  has  been  given  by 
Professor  Edward  Capps.^  He  showed  that  if  chorus  and 
actors  be  thought  of  as  separated  by  a  clearly  marked  line  such 
as  the  edge  of  a  ten-foot  stage  would  afford,  the  action  of  the 
forty-four  extant  dramas  requires  the  chorus  alone  to  pass  over 
this  boundary  at  least  sixty-eight  times,  the  chorus  and  actors 
together  nine  times,  and  the  actors  alone  thirty-nine  times. 
Actors  and  chorus  are  repeatedly  brought  into  the  closest  possible 
contact.  For  example,  in  Euripides'  Iphigenia  among  the  Tau- 
rians,  vss.  1068-70,  Iphigenia  appeals  to  each  member  of  the 
chorus  in  turn,  touching  the  hand  of  one  and  the  chin  and  knees 
of  another,  begging  for  their  help. 

^  Again^  the  inn'dents  of  many^plays  come  into  harmony  with 
theatncal_cqriditions  only  if  we  suppose  that  there  was  no  stage. 
Perhaps  the  best  arid  clearest  illustration  of  this  is  afforded 
by  Aristophanes'  Frogs  (405  B.C.).  Xanthias  and  Dionysus, 
engaged  in  conversation,  enter  the  orchestra  at  one  of  the  side 
entrances  (Fig.  44A).  At  vs.  35  the  latter  calls  attention  to 
the  nearest  of  the  three  doors  in  the  proscenium,  saying:  "I  am 

'  Cf.  Hermes,  XXI  (i886),  603. 

^  Cf.  "The  Greek  Stage  According  to  the  Extant  Dramas,"  Transactions  of  the 
American  Philological  Association,  XXII  (1891),  5 ff.  Similar  results  were  obtained 
by  White,  "The  'Stage'  in  Aristophanes,"  Harvard  Studies,  II  (1891),  159  ff. 


INTRODUCTION 


89 


already  near  this  door  where  I  must  turn  in."  It  transpires 
that„this  is  the  house  of  Heracles  (Fig.  44B),  and  Dionysus' 
knock  brings  his  brother  in  person  to  the  door.  From  him  they 
receive  directions  for  their  trip  to  the  lower  world — that  first 

SEAT  OF 
PRIEST  OF 
DIONYSUS 


PALACE 
OF  PLUTO 
IN  HADES 


ABODE  OF 
HERACLES 
AT  ATHENS 


♦  +  +  ♦  COURSE  OF  DIONYSUS 
o  o  o  e  COURSE  OF  XANTHIAS 
A  AAA  COURSE  OF  CHARON 

Fig.  44. — Movements  of  the  Actors  in  Aristophanes'  Frogs,  vss.  1-460 

they  will  come  to  a  large  lake  which  they  must  cross  in  a  tiny 
boat,  then  they  will  see  perjurers,  thieves,  and  criminals  of  the 
deepest  dye,  and  finally  will  be  received  by  happy  bands  of 
initiates  (the  chorus),  who  "dwell  alongside  the  very  road  at  the 
doors  of  Pluto"  (vss.  162  f.).     Scarcely  have  they  left  Heracles' 


9©  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

door  when  they  behold  a  trundle-boat  pushed  from  the  opposite 
parodus  into  the  orchestra  (CC)  and  hear  Charon's  "Yo-heigh, 
Yo-ho"  (vs.  i8o).  He  approaches  the  edge  of  the  orchestra 
where  they  now  stand,  but  when  they  prepare  to  embark  Charon 
refuses  to  receive  a  slave  on  board  and  poor  Xanthias  is  ordered 
to  run  around  the  lake  {C'C'D;  vs.  193).  Meanwhile  Dionysus 
and  Charon  direct  their  boat  across  the  orchestra  {CD)  to 
where,  in  the  center  of  the  front  row  of  seats,  the  priest  of  Diony- 
sus and  other  functionaries  always  sat  (Fig.  45);^  and  from 
behind  the  scenes,  to  accompany  their  rowing,  the  choreutae 
sing  a  "frog"  chorus  as  if  from  the  bottom  of  the  lake  (vss.  209- 
69).  Upon  disembarking  (at  D)  Dionysus  calls  for  his  slave 
and  catches  his  faint  reply  as  he  comes  into  sight  (!)  from  his 
"arduous"  trip  around  the  orchestra's  semicircumference. 
Xanthias  now  points  out  to  his  master  the  perjurers,  etc.,  in 
the  nearby  audience  (vs.  275).  Presently  they  are  badly 
frightened  and  Dionysus  appeals  to  his  priest,  who  is  within 
arm's  length  of  him,  to  protect  him  (vs.  297).  Now  the  sound 
of  flutes  is  heard  and  the  chorus  of  initiates  enter.  Dionysus 
and  Xanthias  crouch  down,  where  they  are,  to  listen  (vs.  315). 
Immediately  the  orchestra,  which  has  just  been  a  subterranean 
lake,  is  changed  to  the  imagination  into  a  flowery  meadow 
(vss.  326,  351,  etc.).  At  vs.  431  Dionysus  starts  up  from  his 
lurking-place  and  inquires  of  the  chorus,  "Could  you  tell  us 
where  Pluto  dwells  hereabouts?"  and  the  coryphaeus  promptly 
replies:  "Know  that  you  have  come  to  the  very  door"  (vs.  436). 
Dionysus  orders  his  slave  to  pick  up  the  baggage,  walks  across 
the  orchestra  {DE),  and  raps  at  the  central  door  (£),  which 
represents  the  palace  of  Pluto  (vss.  460  ff.).  We  need  continue 
no  further,  for  the  remainder  of  the  play  contains  nothing  that 
is  noteworthy  for  our  present  purpose;  but  it  is  already  evident 
how  closely  the  successive  situations  of  the  comedy  correspond 
to  the  physical  conditions  and  arrangements  of  a  stageless 
theater.    To  those  who  would  apply  Vitruvius'  account  to  the 

'  Fig.  45  is  from  a  photograph  belonging  to  the  University  of  Chicago.     The 
inscription  beneath  the  seat  reads:  "Of  the  priest  of  Dionysus  Eleuthereus."    P.  344. 


Fig.  45 

STONE  CHAIR  OF  THE  PRIEST  OF  DIONYSUS  OPPOSITE  THE  CENTER 

OF  THE  ORCHESTRA  IN  ATHENS 

See  p.  go,  n.  i 


INTRODUCTION  91 

fifth-century  theater,  this  play  presents  ineluctable  difficulties; 
there  is  insufficient  room  for  Charon's  boat  on  a  Vitruvian  or  any 
other  kind  of  a  Greek  stage,  Dionysus  must  appeal  to  his  priest 
who  is  some  eighty  feet  away/  Xanthias  has  no  lake  to  run 
around,  and  Dionysus  must  inquire  the  way  to  Pluto's  palace 
when  he  would  be  standing  considerably  nearer  to  it  than  the 
chorus. 

It  was  a  convention  in  the  earher  fifth-century  plays  that  if 
the  chorus  and  one  actor  were  before  the  audience,  an  incoming 
actor  should  speak  first  to  the  chorus  and  ignore  the  other  actor 
for  the  time  being  (see  pp.  165  f.,  below).  This  convention  was 
oftentimes  extremely  awkward  and  unnatural;  but  if  both 
actors  had  stood  on  a  stage  several  feet  above  the  chorus  it 
surely  would  have  been  altogether  impossible.^ 

The  only  tangible  argument  for  a  stage  of  any  height  in  the 
fifth  century  is  afforded  by  the  occurrence  of  the  words  ava^aiveiv 
("to  ascend")  in  Aristophanes'  Achmnians^{v's>.  732),  Knights 
(vs.  "i49J7and  TFa^^^  (vs.  1342),  and  KarajSalveLv  ("  to  descend") 
in  his  Wasps  (vs.  15 14)  and  Women  in  Council  (vs.  11 52).  All 
of  these  plays,  except  the  last,  were  performed  prior  to  Aris- 
tophanes' Frogs^^j^^(^we  have  already  seen  to  be  incapable  of 
presentation  in  a  staged  theater.  In  my  opinion,  then,  these 
words  are  best  explained  on  the  basis  of  the  slight  difference  in 
level_between  the,  orchestra  and  the  floor  of  the  proscenium 
colonnade,  which  was  probably  elevated  a  step  or  two  above  the 
orchestra  and  was  often  used  by  the  dramatic  performers 
(see^pTBS,  above,  and  pp.  238  f .,  below) .^  Since  Xh^  Acharnians 
was  produced  in  425  b.c,  the  appearance  of  ava^aiveiv  in  that 

'  Cf.  scholium  on  vs.  299  of  the  Frogs:  aTropoOcri  54  nves  ttujs  airb  toO  Xoyeiov 
vepieXOwv  Kal  Kpvcpdeh  6iviadev  tov  iepdus  tovto  \4yet..  <t)aLvovTaL  5k  oiiK  eivai  iirl  toO 
\oyeiov  dW^  iirl  rrjs  6px'r}(yTpas. 

*  Cf.  Graeber,  De  Poetarum  AUicorum  Arte  Scaenica  (191 1),  p.  4. 

3  Cf.  Rees,  "The  Function  of  the  np66vpov  in  the  Production  of  Greek  Plays," 
Classical  Philology,  X  (1915),  128  and  n.  2.  For  other  interpretations  consistent 
with  a  stageless  theater,  cf.  White,  Harvard  Studies,  II  (189 1),  164  flf.,  and  Capps, 
Transactions  of  the  American  Philological  Association,  XXII  (1891),  642.  A  con- 
venient summary  from  the  pro-stage  point  of  view  may  be  found  in  Haigh,  The 
Attic  Theatre',  pp.  166  f.     See  p.  344,  below. 


92 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


play  is  valuable  as  affording  a  terminus  ante  quern  for  the  intro- 
duction of  a  wooden  proscenium  at  Athens. 

The  chorus  of  the  fifth-century  plays  is  fatal  to  any  suggestion 
of  a  Vitruvian  stage,  and  except  Puchstein,  who  frankly  ignored 
the  Hterary  evidence,  no  recent  writer  has  advocated  a  high  stage 
for  the  theater  of  that  period.  The  advocates  of  a  high  stage 
have  clearly  seen  that  they  canjnaEe  headway  only  by^e 
sacrifice  of  the  dramatic  chorus.  They  are  assisted  in  this 
aFtempt  by  the  fact  that  only  three  complete  plays  of  the 
fourth  century  are  extant,  the  pseudo-Euripidean  Rhesus  and 
two  comedies  of  Aristophanes,  and  that  the  role  of  the  chorus 
in  the  latter  happens  to  be  curtailed.  Aristotle,^  also,  speaks 
of  irrelevant  embolima  in  the  work  of  Agathon,  who  won  his 
first  victory  in  416  B.C.  From  these  facts  it  has  been  declared 
that  at  the  close  of  the  fifth  century  or  early  in  the  fourth  the 
chorus  was  either  given  up  altogether  or  "its  functions  were 
merely  those  of  the  modern  band  "  or  "  of  mere  interlude-singers." 
Accordingly,  it  has  been  argued  that  the  actors  at  the  end  of  the 
fifth  century  stood  upon  a  low  stage  (which  for  the  kind  of  plays 
then_exhibited  was  only  less  impracticable  than  a  Vitruvian 
stage)  and  that  they  were  suddenly  elevated  to  the  full  height 
Qf_thej)roscenium  before  the  close  of  the  fourth  century.  It 
must  be  added  that  even  among  those  who  accept  Dorpfeld's 
theory  for  the  fifth  century  there  is  a  tendency  to  go  over  to 
Vitruvius  for  the  period  represented  by  the  Lycurgus  theater  at 
Athens  and  by  the  theater  at  Epidaurus — the  last  quarter  of 
the  fourth  century.^  So  far  as  Vitruvius  himself  is  involved  in 
this,  the  matter  has  already  been  disposed  of.  The  alleged 
disappearance  or  waning  of  the  chorus,  however,  furnishes  no 
better  ground  of  support  for  pro-stage  writers.  To  trace  the 
history  of  the  chorus  in  detail  will  not  be  feasible  at  this  point.* 

^  Cf.  Aristotle's  Poetics  1456029,  and  see  pp.  144  ff.,  below. 

^  Cf.  White,  op.  ciL,  p.  167,  note,  and  Robert,  "Zur  Theaterfrage,"  Hermes, 
XXXII  (1897),  447. 

3  See  pp.  99,  116  f.,  134!.,  and  144-49,  below.  Cf.  Capps,  "The  Chorus  in  the 
Later  Greek  Drama,"  American  Journal  of  Archaeology,  X  (1895),  287  ff.;   Korte, 


INTRODUCTION  93 

It  will  be  sufl&cient  to  state  that  there  is  no  reason  to  believe 
that  the  tragic  chorus  failed  to  participate  in  the  action  or  to 
bear  a  respectable  share  of  the  spoken  lines  until  Roman  times. 
Even  in  New  Comedy,  in  which  the  chorus  is  now  known  to  have 
appeared  only  for  the  entr^  actes,  its  on-coming  is  often  used  to 
motivate  the  withdrawal  of  the  actors.  Such  a  motivation  could 
scarcely  have  become  common  if  the  actors  stood  so  far  above 
the  choreutae  as  to  be  safe  from  their  drunken  words  and  acts.^ 
^  Another  argument  in  favor  of  a  stage  has  been  drawn  from 
the  phrases  eirl  rijs  (TKrjvrjs  and  airo  Trjs  (Tktjvtjs,  which  occur  in  two 
fourth-century  authors,  Aristotle  and  Demosthenes,^  It  has 
been  claimed  that  eirl  "naturally  means  *on'  and  implies  eleva- 
tion" and  that  a-Krjvrj  means  "stage."  If  this  exegesis  were 
correct,  there  could  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  presence  of  a  stage  in 
the  fourth-century  theater ;  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  neither  claim 
is  warranted.  Everyone  would  concede  that  the  primary, 
untechnical  meaning  of  cTKrjvr}  is  "hut"  or  "tent,"  and  that  the 
word  was  applied  to  the  scene-building,  which  was  erected  back 
of  the  orchestra  and  which  came  to  be  increasingly  substantial 
in  construction.  Though  the  term  acquired  a  variety  of  other 
theatrical  meanings,  I  agree  with  those  who  maintain  that  at 


"Das  Fortleben  des  Chors  im  griechischen  Drama,"  N.  Jahrbiicherf.  kl.  Altertum,  V 
(1900),  81  fE.;  Flickinger,  "XOPOT  in  Terence's  Heauton  and  Agathon's  EMBO- 
AIMA,"  Classical  Philology,  VII  (1912),  24flf.;  and  Duckett,  Studies  in  Ennius 
(1915),  pp.  S3  flf. 

'  See  p.  147,  below,  and  cf.  Graf,  Szenische  Untersuchungen  zu  Menander  (1914), 
p.  14.  The  same  motive  appears  also  in  the  fifth  centur^^,  in  Euripides'  Phoenician 
Maids,  vss.  192  ff.,  and  Phaethon  (Nauck,  Tragicorum  Craecorum  Fragmenta,  p.  602, 
fr-  773>  vss.  10  ff.);  cf.  Fraenkel,  De  Media  et  Nova  Comoedia  (1912),  p.  71,  and 
Harms,  De  Introitu  Personarum  in  Euripidis  et  Novae  Comoediae  Fabulis  (1914), 
p.  60;  see  p.  282,  below. 

*The  former  phrase  occurs  in  Aristotle's  Poetics  1453027,  1455028,  1459&25, 
and  1460015,  and  Demosthenes  xix,  p.  449,  §337;  the  latter  in  Aristotle's  (?) 
Poetics  1452^)18  and  25,  Aristotle's  Problems  918626,  92009,  and  922617,  and 
Demosthenes  xviii,  p.  288,  §  180.  Cf.  Richards,  Classical  Review,  V  (1891),  97, 
and  XVIII  (1904),  179,  and  Flickinger,  "The  Meaning  of  iirl  rijs  a-Krji'rjs  in  Writers 
of  the  Fourth  Century,"  University  of  Chicago  Decennial  Publications,  VI  (1902), 
II  ff.,  and  "Scaenica,"  Transactions  of  the  American  Philological  Association,  XL 
(1909),  109  ff. 


94  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

no  period  did  it  mean  "stage"  in  classical  Greek.  It  is  mani- 
festly impossible  to  discuss  the  matter  here,  but  I  shall  presently 
have  occasion  to  show  that  even  in  Pollux,  who  lived  in  the  second 
century  a.d.,  it  had  not  gained  this  meaning  (see  p.  98,  below). 
If  (TKYjuT]  does  not  mean  "stage,"  it  is  unnecessary  to  argue  that 
eTTt  does  not  mean  "on,"  for  actors  could  speak  from  the  porch 
or  from  between  the  columns  of  the  proscenium,  and  so  could  be 
said  to  speak  "from  the  scene-building"  (dxo  rrjs  (Tktjptjs)  or  to  be 
standing  "on  the  scene-building"  (exl  rijs  (XKrjprjs)  without  being 
"on  top  of  the  scene-building."  Just  so  the  teachings  of  the 
Stoic  philosophers  are  referred  to  as  ol  airo  rrjs  (TTods  XoyoL^ 
without  any  impHcation  that  the  Stoics  spoke  from  a  platform, 
let  alone  from  the  top  of  the  stoa.  Nevertheless,  it  is  a  fact 
that  eiri  does  not  always  mean  "on."  For  example,  Diodorus 
and  Plutarch  both  employ  eirl  (TKrjvrjs  in  a  non-technical  sense 
with  reference  to  an  occurrence  "before"  or  "at  the  quarters" 
of  a  commander.  And  Lucian's  metamorphosed  ass  was 
mortified  at  being  shown  to  be  a  thief  and  glutton  "before  his 
master"  (cttI  tov  deffTroTovY — surely  there  was  no  superposition 
there.  Such  passages,  however,  come  from  later  Greek,  when 
the  prepositions  were  less  clear-cut  in  meaning,  and  it  is  better, 
as  Professor  Gildersleeve  has  suggested,^  to  "repose  quietly  on 
the  phraseological  use  of  eirl;  *on  the  playhouse  side'  is  all  the 
Dorpfeld  theory  demands." 

This  being  the  theoretical  situation  with  regard  to  the  original 
meaning  of  eirl  rrjs  (TKrjprjs,  it  is  important  to  observe  that  aheady 
in  its  fourth-century  usage  the  phrase  was  employed  vaguely, 
often  meaning  httle  more  than  "in  the  theater"  or  "in  a  play." 
In  fact,  in  one  Aristotelian  passage,  as  frequently  in  later  writers, 
it  clearly  includes  both  chorus  and  actors  within  its  scope.  "We 
ought,  therefore,  to  represent  the  marvelous  in  tragedy,  but  in 
epic  there  is  greater  room  for  the  improbable  (by  which  the 

'  Cf.  Athenaeus,  p.  211  B. 

"  Cf.  Diodorus  Siculus  xi.  10,  Plutarch  Life  of  Brutus,  c.  xlv,  and  Life  of  Deme- 
trius, c.  xxxii,  and  Lucian  ( ?),  Lucius  sive  Asinus,  §47. 

3  Cf.  American  Journal  of  Philology,  XVIII  (1897),  120. 


INTRODUCTION  95 

marvelous  is  most  often  brought  to  pass)  on  account  of  our  not 
actually  beholding  the  characters.  For  example,  Achilles' 
pursuit  of  Hector,  if  enacted  in  a  play  (eTrt  ttjs  (TK-qvijs) ,  would 
appear  absurd — the  Greeks  {ol  fxeu)  standing  still  instead  of 
joining  in  the  pursuit  and  Achilles  (6  5')  motioning  them  back — 
but  in  epic  verse  the  absurdity  escapes  notice."^  It  is  evident 
that  Aristotle  was  thinking  of  Homer's  Iliad  xxii,  vss.  205  £.: 
"But  Achilles  shook  his  head  to  the  people  in  refusal  and  did  not 
permit  them  to  cast  their  sharp  weapons  at  Hector,"  and  was 
trying  to  show  why  a  scene  that  was  excellent  in  an  epic  could 
not  be  dramatized  with  success.  In  Homer  there  are  two  groups 
of  characters:  (a)  Achilles  and  Hector,  and  (b)  the  Greek  army. 
In  Aristotle's  imaginary  dramatization  of  the  incident  these 
groups  are  represented  by  the  actors  (6  de)  and  the  chorus  (ol  fxeu), 
respectively.  Consequently,  if  (TKr]vr]  here  means  an  elevated 
stage,  chorus  as  well  as  actors  must  have  stood  thereon.  Nor 
did  the  incongruity  consist  in  the  mere  position  of  the  chorus 
inactive  in  the  orchestra  and  the  actors  running  on  the  stage, 
but  in  the  action  itself,  since  the  action  is  equally  irrational  in 
the  epic  (where  orchestra  and  stage  assuredly  play  no  part)  but  is 
there  more  tolerable  because  the  scene  is  not  distinctly  visuaHzed. 
I  do  not  insist  upon  cTKrjvrf  here  meaning  "play"  or  "perform- 
ance," though  that  is  a  frequent  use  and  gives  the  indefinite 
sense  required;  but  at  least  until  this  passage  can  be  shown 
capable  of  another  interpretation,  believers  in  a  stage  cannot 
fairly  cite  Aristotle's  use  of  iirl  rrjs  (XKrjvrjs  in  support  of  their 
opinion. 

But  though  eirl  (aird)  rrjs  (TKrjvrjs  was  broad  enough  to  comprise 
both  chorus  and  actors,  it  naturally  did  not  always  include  them 
both.  Particularly,  if  it  were  desired  to  distinguish  between  the 
two  kinds  of  dramatic  performers,  since  ol  eirl  (dTro)  rrjs  dvixeXrjs 
could  be  used  of  the  dith3n-ambic  choruses  and  other  "thymelic" 
(i.e.,  orchestral)  performers,  and  could  not  possibly  be  appHed  to 
the  actors,  that  phrase  would  naturally  be  used  to  designate  the 
dramatic  chorus  as  well,  and  ol  eirl  (dro)  rrjs  crKrjvijs  would  be 

'  Cf.  Aristotle's  Poetics  1460011-17. 


96  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

used  in  the  restricted  sense  for  the  actors  alone,  even  in  opposition 
to  the  dramatic  chorus.  This  was  especially  common  in  the 
case  of  ol  ard  CK-qvris,  doubtless  because  the  scene-building  was 
thought  of  as  the  home  of  the  characters  "from"  which  they 
came,  as  the  choreutae,  whether  dramatic  or  dithyrambic,  did 
not.  Thus,  a  lyrical  duet  between  the  dramatic  chorus  and  the 
actors  (a  commus — koju/xos)  is  defined  as  a  "dirge  shared  by  the 
xopov  Kal  <T(hv>  ctTTo  (TKTjvrjs."'^  But  neither  the  original  mean- 
ing of  eirl  (airo)  rrjs  (TKrjvrjs  nor  this  secondary  development  which 
brought  it  into  opposition  to  the  thymehc  performers  and  even 
to  the  dramatic  choreutae  p'-esupposes  a  raised  stage  for  the 
exclusive  use  of  actors,  still  less  requires  that  aKrjurj  should  have 
meant  "stage." 

Now  ol  cttI  (olto)  TTjS  (rKT]vrjs  and  ol  errl  (ctTro)  rrjs  dvfxekrjs  are 
exactly  equivalent  to  the  more  common  expressions  ol  (XKrjPLKol 
and  ol  dvfxeXLKoL  For  example,  Euripides  is  called  both  6  ert 
TTJs  (TKrjprjs  4>i\6(TO(f)os  and  philosophus  scaenicus.^  The  relation- 
ship is  an  obvious  one,  but  is  worth  noting  because  one  of  Bethe's 
pupils  has  made  aKrjviKos  and  dvixekiKos  the  basis  of  an  attempt  to 
prove  the  existence  of  a  stage  in  the  fourth-century  theater  at 
Athens.  But  since  the  earlier  expressions  eirl  (a-iro)  rrjs  (XKrjvrjs 
and  eirl  {airo)  rrjs  dvixeXrjs  were  used  with  the  same  distinctions  of 
meaning  but  without  presupposing  a  stage,  there  is  obviously 
no  need  of  one  to  explain  the  later  expressions.  Moreover, 
Dr.  Frei  is  guilty  of  an  egregious  petitio  principii:  he  first  accepts 
Bethe's  hypothesis  that  the  Lycurgus  theater  had  a  stage  and 
consequently  concludes  that  the  distinction  between  cK-qviKos 
and  OvuekiKos  must  be  explained  on  the  basis  of  difference  in  the 
place  of  performance  there,  and  then  uses  these  conclusions  to 
prove  a  stage  at  that  period.^    All  attempts  to  forge  a  pro-stage 

^  Cf.  Aristotle  (?)  Poetics  1452624  f. 

'  Cf.  Clemens  Alexandrinus  (Potter),  p.  688,  and  Vitruvius  viii,  praefatio  §  i. 
Incidentally  it  may  be  remarked  that  Euripides'  philosophizing  and  personal  views 
are  found  in  his  choral  odes  no  less  than  in  the  histrionic  parts  of  his  plays  (see 
p.  140,  below). 

^  Cf.  Frei,  De  Cerlaminibus  Thymelicis  (1900),  pp.  14  and  15.  The  dissertation 
provoked  a  controversy  between  Bethe  and  Dorpfeld;  cf.  Bethe,  "Thymeliker  und 
Skeniker,"  Hermes,  XXXVI  (rgoi),  597  ff.,  and  Dorpfeld,  "Thymele  und  Skene," 
ibid.,  XXXVII  (1902),  249  fE.  and  483  ff. 


INTRODUCTION  97 

argument  out  of  any  of  these  expressions  must  be  pronounced  a 
failure.  But  of  course  in  the  Roman  era,  after  most  Greek 
theaters  had  been  provided  with  a  raised  stage,  the  differentiation 
between  eirl  {airo)  rrjs  (TKrjvrjs  and  aK-qviKos,  on  the  one  hand,  and 
Ittl  ((xtto)  tt]s  dvfxeXrjs  and  dvixeXiKos,  on  the  other,  became  doubly- 
appropriate,  because  the  difference  in  levels  now  reinforced  a 
distinction  which  had  already  existed  without  it. 

Vitruvius,  of  course,  made  no  philological  or  archaeological 
study  of  the  two  adjectives  but  explained  them  in  terms  of  the 
theater  which  was  known  to  him  (see  pp.  76  f . ,  above) .  It  should 
be  noted,  however,  that  Vitruvius  mentions  only  the  tragic  and 
comic  actors  under  the  term  scaenici  and  includes  under  thymelici 
"the  other  artists"  who  perform  in  the  orchestra.  Does  the 
dramatic  chorus  belong  among  the  latter?  Or  is  it  simply 
ignored  here?  The  answer  is  far  from  certain.  If  we  were 
dealing  only  with  new  plays,  it  is  conceivable  that  the  choruses 
were  so  detached  from  the  histrionic  action  as  to  be  able  to  stand 
ten  or  twelve  feet  below  the  actors.  But  it  is  well  known  that 
some  of  the  fifth-century  tragedies  were  still  popular  and  fre- 
quently acted;  and  as  we  have  already  seen,  they  were  not 
amenable  to  any  such  method  of  staging.  In  revivals  of  early 
masterpieces,  then,  did  all  the  performers,  actors  and  chorus 
ahke,  appear  in  the  orchestra,  as  in  the  old  Greek  theaters  ?  Or 
was  the  chorus  so  reduced  in  size,  and  its  manner  of  performance 
so  altered,  that  it  could  stand  with  the  actors  on  the  high  and 
narrow  Graeco-Roman  stage,  as  they  all  certainly  did  on  the  low 
and  broad  Roman  stage?  It  is  impossible  to  determine.  All 
that  can  truthfully  be  said  is  that  Vitruvius  does  not  clearly 
indicate  the  place  of  the  dramatic  chorus  in  the  Graeco-Roman 
theater.  My  own  opinion  is  that  he  is  speaking  of  two  distinct 
types  of  performance  and  is  ignoring  the  dramatic  chorus. 

The  same  question  arises  in  connection  with  Pollux.  He 
catalogues  eleven  parts  of  a  theater.  Of  these,  only  six  concern 
us  at  present:  <rKr)vrj,  orchestra,  logium,  proscenium,  parascenia, 
and  hyposcenium  (IV,  123).  Dorpfeld  thinks  that  Pollux  is 
describing  the  Greek  Hellenistic  theater,^  but  Pollux  was  for 

'  Cf.  Athenische  Mittheilungen,  XXVIII  (1903),  420  f. 


gS  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

many  years  a  professor  at  Athens  and  dedicated  his  work  to  the 
emperor  Commodus  (161-92  A.D.).  Unless  his  language  pre- 
vents it,  it  is  more  natural  to  suppose  that  he  had  the  Athenian 
structure  of  his  own  day  in  mind,  and  this  would  be  the  Nero 
theater.  In  that  case,  every  term  falls  into  place.  For  the 
Nero  theater  logium  could  refer  to  the  stage  alone;  and  as  there 
would  be  no  sense  in  Pollux  mentioning  two  words  for  stage,  and 
since  no  other  term  for  scene-building  as  a  whole  (including 
logium,  prosceniimi,  and  parascenia)  appears  in  his  list,  CKrjvif 
must  still  mean  scene-building  and  not  stage.  Pollux  then 
proceeds  to  say  that  "the  scene-building  belongs  to  the  actors 
and  the  orchestra  to  the  chorus,"  and  a  Uttle  later  that  "entering 
at  the  orchestra  they  mount  to  the  scene-building  on  ladders 
(steps?)."*  Believing  that  Pollux  is  describing  the  Hellenistic 
theater,  Dorpfeld  interprets  the  first  of  these  passages  much  as 
Aristotle's  use  of  ewl  (a-rro)  rrjs  a-Krjurjs  has  just  been  explained. 
The  second  passage  he  considers  a  reference  to  some  such 
unusual  incident  as  occurs  in  Aristophanes'  Clouds,  where  an 
actor  is  bidden  to  climb  (from  the  orchestra)  by  means  of  a 
ladder  to  the  housetop  (i.e.,  to  the  top  of  the  scene-building)  and 
destroy  the  roof  .^  There  is  much  merit  in  this  explanation,  and 
it  is  not  necessarily  inconsistent  with  a  belief  that  Pollux  is  in 
general  dealing  with  the  contemporaneous  theater;  such  learned 
digressions  occur  not  infrequently  in  his  text.  Nevertheless, 
since  stone  steps  leading  from  the  orchestra  to  the  stage  of  the 
scene-building  are  a  part  of  the  Phaedrus  theater  at  Athens,  it 
is  not  improbable  that  they  belonged  also  to  the  Nero  stage,  if, 
as  Dorpfeld  first  thought,  this  was  only  about  six  inches  higher 
than  the  present  stage  (see  p.  74,  above).  On  the  other  hand, 
the  pro-stage  writers  boldly  cite  these  passages  in  support  of 
their  views  and  as  if  they  pertained  to  the  earlier  periods  of  the 
theater's  history.  But  though  Pollux  is  probably  discussing  a 
theater  with  a  stage,  0-^77^17  does  not  mean  stage  in  these  two 

'  The  Greek  text  has  already  been  quoted  on  p.  78,  nn.  i  and  2. 
'  Cf.  Clouds,  vss.  i486  ff.    A  somewhat  similar  use  of  ladders  is  mentioned  in 
Euripides'  Bacchanals,  vss.  12 12  ff. 


INTRODUCTION  99 

sentences  any  more  than  in  his  catalogue  of  theater  parts ;  and 
his  testimony,  however  it  is  to  be  interpreted,  should  not  be 
appHed  to  fifth-  and  fourth-century  conditions  unless  confirma- 
tory evidence  for  so  doing  can  be  produced  from  these  periods. 
Now  the  last  of  these  sentences  from  Pollux  concludes  a  discus- 
sion of  the  conventional  significance  of  the  parodi  in  the  ancient 
theater  (see  p.  233,  below).  In  my  opinion,  the  Nero  stage, 
though  much  deeper  than  the  Hellenistic  proscenium,  was 
shallow  enough  so  that  the  parodi  still  led  directly  into  the 
orchestra.  In  that  case,  when  the  characters  entered  by  either 
parodus,  as  they  would  when  they  were  thought  of  as  coming 
from  the  market  place,  harbor,  or  country,  they  would  have  to 
pass  through  the  orchestra  first  and  mount  from  there  upon  the 
stage  by  means  of  the  steps,  exactly  as  Pollux  says.  Further- 
more, if  actors  could  traverse  this  route  it  must  have  been 
available  also  for  the  chorus.  In  other  words,  although  at  this 
period  the  orchestra  was  the  exclusive  sphere  of  the  dithyrambic 
choruses  and  other  thymelic  performers  and  was  the  normal 
place  for  the  dramatic  chorus,  and  though  the  actors  regularly 
stood  upon  the  stage,  yet  both  the  actors  and  the  dramatic 
chorus  appeared  in  either  orchestra  or  stage  according  to  the 
requirements  of  the  plays.  It  must  be  understood,  however, 
that  this  manner  of  staging  was  confined  to  the  Nero  theater 
at  Athens;  the  stage  of  the  Graeco-Roman  theaters  and  the 
proscenium  of  the  Hellenistic  theaters  were  too  high  to  make  it 
feasible,  and  in  the  purely  Roman  theaters  all  performers 
appeared  upon  the  stage.  But  why  is  it  permissible  to 
accept  a  low  stage  for  the  Nero  theater  and  reject  it  for 
the  fifth  century?  In  the  first  place,  the  stage  in  Roman 
times  is  attested  by  incontrovertible  evidence,  both  literary 
and  archaeological,  but  for  the  fifth  century  it  rests  upon  pure 
hypothesis.  In  the  second  place,  there  is  no  reason  to  beheve 
that  the  Athenian  chorus  in  Roman  times  was  brought  into 
actual  contact  with  the  tragic  actors  or  had  to  pass  to  their 
place  of  action  so  frequently  as  in  fifth-century  drama  (see 
p.  88,  above). 


lOO  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

There  is  still  another  sentence  in  Pollux  which  needs  to  be 
discussed.  He  declares  that  "  the  hyposcenium  is  adorned  with 
columns  and  sculptured  figures  turned  toward  the  audience,  and 
it  lies  beneath  (utto)  the  logium."^  There  is  no  doubt  as  to  the 
general  position  of  the  hyposcenium — it  is  the  room^  immediately 
behind  the  orchestra  and  on  the  same  level — but  there  is  a 
division  of  opinion  as  to  the  type  of  theater  which  had  one  and 
as  to  its  function.  In  accordance  with  his  belief  that  Pollux  is 
describing  the  Hellenistic  theater,  Dorpfeld  understands  it  as 
the  fijst  story  of  the  scene-building  in  a  theater  of  this  type.^ 
The  columns  and  statuary  would  then  refer  to  the  proscenium 
just  in  front  of  it  and  to  the  figures  which  were  sometimes  placed 
in  the  intercolumniations  thereof.  In  HeUenistic  theaters 
Dorpfeld  believes  the  top  of  the  proscenium  to  have  been  used  by 
speakers  in  the  public  assembUes  and  for  that  reason  to  have  been 
known  as  a  logium  (see  p.  59,  n.  i,  above) ;  the  hyposcenium,  of 
course,  lay  on  a  lower  level.  PoUux'  statement  could  not  refer 
to  a  theater  with  a  stage  because  the  wall  beneath  the  front  of 
the  stage  was  not  decorated  with  columns  or  statuary  (see  p.  86, 
above),  the  proscenium  now  being  raised  one  story  and  appearing 
at  the  back  of  the  stage.  On  the  contrary,  the  pro-stage  writers 
maintain  that  Pollux  refers  to  the  space  under  a  stage.  In  this 
instance  I  agree  with  them  as  against  Dorpfeld,  though  I  would 
not  look  upon  Pollux'  statement  as  applying  to  the  theaters 
before  his  own  day.  Accepting  Dorpfeld's  opinion  that  the 
Hellenistic  theaters  had  no  stage,  I  think  that  the  first  story  of 
their  scene-buildings  had  no  special  name  and  that  the  term 
" h3^oscenium"  had  not  yet  come  into  use;  PoUux,  however,  is 
referring  to  the  space  under  the  stage  in  the  Nero  theater.  The 
front  of  this  was  probably  adorned  with  the  same  frieze  as  now 
stands  before  the  Phaedrus  stage,  and  we  may  not  dogmatically 

'  Cf.  Pollux  iv.  124:  rb  dk  vwo<TK-f]VLov  Kioffi  Kal  dyoKfiaTloLS  KeK6a/ji,r]rai  irpbs  rb 
diarpov  Terpa/tt/U^i'otS,  xnrb  rb  Xoyelov  Kelfievov, 

'  Also,  the  front  wall  of  this  room,  just  as  ctki/vt}  is  not  only  the  scene-building 
as  a  whole  but  also  its  front  wall;  cf.  Flickinger,  Plutarch  as  a  Source  of  Information 
on  the  Greek  Theater,  pp.  43  f. 

3  Cf.  Athenische  Mittheilungen,  XXVIII  (1903),  418  ff. 


INTRODUCTION  loi 

assert  that  no  columns  stood  there  as  well/  The  Athens  theater 
was  inclined  to  be  sui  generis  at  all  periods,  and  these  would  not 
be  the  only  particulars  in  which  the  Nero  theater  differed  from 
the  Graeco-Roman  type. 

There  remains  for  discussion  a  passage  in  Plutarch.  It 
concerns  an  episode  in  the  career  of  Demetrius  Poliorcetes 
(337-283  B.C.)  and  has  been  thought  to  refer  to  the  theater  of  his 
day.  But  a  study  has  been  made  of  Plutarch's  practice  in  such 
matters  and  it  has  been  found  that  many  times  he  deliberately 
sought  vividness  of  presentation  by  modernizing  his  accounts 
and  picturing  his  scenes  amid  the  famihar  surroundings  of 
contemporaneous  life;  in  other  words,  the  references  to  the 
theater  in  connection  with  his  anecdotes  never  presuppose  any 
other  type  of  building  than  the  stage-equipped  buildings  of  his 
own  day,  and  in  several  instances  this  method  resulted  in  patent 
anachronisms.  One  example  will  suffice.^  Plutarch  declares 
that  Lycurgus,  the  Spartan  lawgiver  of  about  the  ninth  century 
B.C.,  believed  that  the  minds  of  assemblymen  were  distracted 
by  "statues  and  paintings  or  the  proscenia  of  theaters  or  the 
extravagantly  wrought  roofs  of  council  chambers,"  and  so  caused 
the  Spartans  to  hold  their  assemblies  in  an  open  space.  The 
author  has  here  modernized  his  account  in  two  particulars: 
he  speaks  as  if  Lycurgus  were  famihar  with  a  fully  developed 
theater  building  and  as  if  it  had  already  come  to  be  used,  else- 
where in  Greece,  as  a  place  of  meeting  for  the  popular  assembly. 
Of  course,  Lycurgus  antedated  the  Greek  drama  and  all  but  the 
crudest  forms  of  choral  performances  by  centuries,  and  this  fact 
was  as  well  known  to  Plutarch  as  it  is  to  us. 

Now  Plutarch  says^  that  "Demetrius  came  into  the  city 
(Athens)  and  ordered  the  entire  population  to  be  assembled  into 

'  Robert  would  emend  the  text  so  that  the  statement  would  explain  the 
proscenium  instead  of  the  hyposcenium;  cf.  Hermes,  XXXII  (1897),  448.  In 
that  case  vir6  must  mean  "behind,"  a  possible  meaning,  and  Pollux  would  be 
speaking  of  the  proscenium  in  a  theater  with  a  stage.  Pollux  includes  the  prosce- 
nium in  his  catalogue  of  theater  parts  (see  pp.  97  f .,  above),  but  does  not  define  it. 

»  Cf.  Plutarch  Life  of  Lycurgus,  c.  vi,  and  Flickinger,  Plutarch  as  a  Source  of 
Information  on  the  Greek  Theater  (1904),  p.  52. 

»  Cf.  Plutarch  Life  of  Demetrius,  c.  xxxiv. 


I02 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


the  theater  and  hedged  in  the  scene-building  {<TKr}vi]v)  on  every 
side  with  troops  and  surrounded  the  stage  (XoYetoj/)  with  guards, 
and  himself  descending  (/caraiSas),  like  the  tragic  actors,  through 
the  upper  parodi  (5td  Tchv  avo3  Trap68o}v)  he  ended  their  fears  with 
his  very  first  words."  In  my  opinion,  the  word  KarajSas  ("de- 
scending")   clearly  shows  that  Xoyelov  means   "stage."     The 


Fig.  46. — Plan  of  the  Theater  at  Epidaurus  in  Argolis 
See  p.  104,  n.  1 

"upper  parodi,"  then,  must  be  the  passages  opening  upon  the 
logium  from  the  parascenia.  As  Plutarch  visualized  the  scene 
and  wished  his  readers  to  do  so,  Demetrius  came  out  upon  the 
stage  from  one  of  the  side  entrances  but  did  not  address  the 
people  from  there,  as  an  orator  of  Plutarch's  own  day  would  have 
done.^  Instead,  in  his  desire  to  show  the  Athenians  his  good- 
will he  passed  on  down  the  central  steps,  as  Plutarch  had  often 
seen  the  actors  do  in  that  theater  (see  p.  99,  above) ,  and  addressed 
the  assemblage  from  the  orchestra.     Since  he  could  have  passed 

'  Cf.  Plutarch  Praecepta  Gerendae  ReipuUicae  823B,  and  see  p.  59.  n.  i,  above. 


INTRODUCTION  103 

through  only  one  side  entrance,  the  plural  (irapodoov)  must  be  due 
to  a  sort  of  zeugma,  to  imply  that  he  came  through  one  upper 
parodus  and  one  upper  entrance,  viz.,  the  central  steps.  The 
pro-stage  writers  who  seek  to  apply  Plutarch's  words  to  the 
Lycurgus  theater  in  which  the  incident  really  happened,  and  who 
use  them  as  an  argument  for  a  stage  at  that  period,  are  forced  to 
ignore  the  word  /cara/3ds,  for  they  cannot  allow  that  "tragic 
actors"  regularly  descended  from  the  Lycurgus  proscenium  into 
the  orchestra.  If  we  go  back  of  Plutarch's  words  and  inquire 
what  Demetrius  actually  did  in  the  Lycurgus  theater,  the  answer 
is  plain:  he  simply  advanced  from  the  scene-building  into  the 
orchestra,  and  expressions  consistent  with  this  must  have  ap- 
peared in  the  source  from  which  Plutarch  derived  his  account. 
In  fact,  in  describing  a  similar  scene  at  Corinth,  Plutarch  retained 
words  which  are  vague  enough  to  be  applicable  to  either  type  of 
theater/  He  has  simply  modernized  one  account  and  brought 
over  the  other  unchanged. 

The  zenith  of  Attic  drama  had  passed  by,  entirely  for  tragedy 
and  almost  so  for  comedy,  before  the  remains  of  theaters  outside 
of  Athens  become  frequent.^  Nevertheless,  these  sometimes  aid 
materially  in  reconstructing  or  interpreting  the  Athenian  theater, 
and  it  will  be  necessary  to  dwell  briefly  upon  a  few  of  them. 
Perhaps  the  earliest  and  most  primitive  is  found  at  Thoricus 
in  southern  Attica  (Figs.  70  f.).  This  was  built  in  the  fifth  or 
fourth  century  B.C.  and  was  subsequently  enlarged  somewhat. 
The  orchestra  is  oblong  rather  than  circular,  being  bounded  at 
one  side  by  a  temple,  at  the  other  side  by  a  greenroom  or  storage 
chamber,  and  at  the  rear  by  a  retaining  wall.  There  is  no  reason 
to  believe  that  a  permanent  scene-building  was  ever  erected 
behind  the  orchestra.     It  is  apparent  that  this  structure  has 

'  Cf.  Plutarch's  Life  of  Arakis,  c.  xxiii:  ^Trtcrrijcrar  S^  raTs  irapSdois  toi>s 
'Axaioi>s  avrbs  dirb  rfjs  a-K-qvTJs  els  rb  ixiaov  irporfKOe.  For  other  interpretations,  cf. 
Robert,  Hermes,  XXXII  (1897),  448  ff.;  Miiller,  Philologiis,  Supplementband,  VII 
(1899),  52  f.  and  90  f.;  Dorpfeld,  Athenische  Mitiheilungen,  XXVIII  (1903), 
421  fE.,  etc. 

^  A  convenient  chronological  table  of  the  extant  theaters  is  given  by  Fiechter, 
op.  cit.,  pp.  24-27. 


I04  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

several  points  of  resemblance  to  the  Athenian  theater  of  the 
period  between  ca.  499  B.C.  and  ca.  465  B.C.  (see pp.  65 f.,  above). 

The  most  symmetrical  of  all  the  Greek  theaters  and  one  of 
the^'best  preserved  is  that  at  Epidaurus  (Figs.  46-52  and  72,2).^ 
Its  architect  was  the  younger  PolycHtus,  and  it  was  built  toward 
the  close  of  the  fourth  century  B.C.  If  we  are  right  in  believing 
that  the  proscenium  was  not  used  as  a  stage,  then  the  Epidaurus 
theater  never  had  a  stage.  At  any  rate,  it  was  not  rebuilt  and 
provided  with  one  in  Roman  times.  In  the  center  of  the  orches- 
tra stands  a  block  of  stone  with  a  circular  cavity,  doubtless  the 
foundation  of  the  thymele.  There  is  not  only  space  for  the  full 
circle  of  the  orchestra  (in  the  narrowest  sense;  see  p.  83,  n.  2) 
but  the  bounding  stones  are  actually  continued  for  the  full  dis- 
tance. The  stone  proscenium,  containing  half-columns  (Fig,  72, 
2)  of  the  Ionic  order  and  once  eleven  feet  seven  inches  or  about 
twelve  Roman  feet  in  height,  was  erected  in  the  second  or 
third  century  B.C.  and  replaced  a  wooden  proscenium.  The 
parascenia  were  rebuilt  at  the  same  time  and  seem  originally  to 
have  been  broader  and  to  have  projected  farther  from  the  scene- 
building.  In  either  parodus  stood  a  handsome  double  gateway 
(Figs.  49  and  51  f.),  one  door  of  which  led  into  the  orchestra  and 
the  other  opened  upon  a  ramp,  somewhat  sharply  inclined,  which 
debouched  on  the  top  of  the  proscenium.  Ramps  are  found  also 
in  the  Sicyon  theater. 

The  theater  at  Eretria,  on  the  west  coast  of  Euboea,  is  not 
only  one  of  the  earliest  but  also  presents  several  unusual  features 
(Figs.  53-55  and  72)  .^  It  falls  into  three  periods.  The  old  scene- 
building  was  erected  early  in  the  fourth  century  B.C.  A  later 
scene-building  was  erectedin  front  of  the  otherabout  300B.C.  The 
white  marble  proscenium  belongs  to  the  first  century  B.C.  or  later. 
The  precinct  of  Dionysus  at  Eretria  was  situated  on  level  ground, 
and  this  fact  necessitated  different  arrangements  than  were 

'  Fig.  46  is  taken  from  Dorpfeld-Reisch,  Das  griechische  Theater,  Fig.  50. 
Figs.  47-52  are  from  photographs  by  Dr.  A.  S.  Cooley. 

*Figs.  53-54  are  redrawn  from  Dorpfeld-Reisch,  Das  griechische  Tlieater, 
Figs.  44-45,  respectively;  Fig.  55  is  from  a  photograph  by  Dr.  A.  S.  Cooley. 


Fig.  47. — The  Auditorium  from  tlie  North 


FiG.  48. — Orchestra  and  Scene-Building  from  the  South 

THE  THEATER  AT  EPIDAURUS 

See  p.  104,  n.  i 


Fk;.  49. — The  West  Parodus 


Fig.  50. — The  East  Parodus 

THE  THEATER  AT  EPIDAURUS 

See  p.  104,  n.  i 


Fig.  51. — The  Gateway  in  the  West  Parodus 


W^ 


Fig.  52. — Looking  through  the  West  Parodus 
THE  THEATER  AT  EPIDAURUS 

See  p.  104,  n.  i 


INTRODUCTION 


lOS 


feasible  on  the  usual  hillside  site.  The  highest  ground  in  Fig.  55 
shows  the  original  level  on  which  the  first  scene  -building,  orches- 
tra, and  auditorium  were  erected  (Fig.  54) .  This  scene-building 
was  of  the  common  type  with  projecting  parascenia  between 


^._..;:-rA\ 


Fig.  53. — Ground  Plan  of  the  Theater  at  Eretria  in  Euboea 
See  p.  104,  n.  3 

which  the  proscenium  must  have  been  constructed  of  wood. 
The  seats  at  this  period  apparently  were  wooden  bleachers  like  the 
iKpia  of  the  primitive  orchestra  in  the  old  market  place  at  Athens 
(see  pp.  63  f.,  above);  and  when  they  proved  unsatisfactory, 
it  seemed  easier  to  excavate  the  center  of  the  area  than  to  throw 
up  a  mound  around  it.    Accordingly,  earth  to  a  depth  of  ten 


io6 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


and  a  half  feet  was  removed  to  form  a  new  orchestra  somewhat 
north  of  the  old  one.  In  order  that  the  old  scene-building  might 
not  have  to  be  taken  down  or  lose  its  serviceability,  the  earth 
just  in  front  of  it  was  left  standing  and  was  held  in  place  by  a 
retaining  wall.  Over  this  space  was  built  a  new  scene-building, 
really  only  an  episcenium.  Communication  between  the  old 
level  and  the  new  was  secured  by  means  of  a  vaulted  passageway 
and  stone  steps.  Before  the  retaining  wall  stood  a  wooden 
proscenium,  the  top  of  which  doubtless  continued  the  floor  of  the 
scene-buildings  at  the  original  ground  level.     The  boundary  of 


Fig.  54. — Cross-Section  of  the  Theater  at  Eretria 

See  p.  104,  n.  2 

the  orchestra  (in  the  narrowest  sense)  stopped  at  the  semi- 
circumference,  but  there  was  sufficient  room  before  the  pro- 
scenium for  the  complete  circle.  A  tunnel,  six  and  a  half  feet 
high  and  three  feet  wide  and  with  stone  steps  at  either  end,  led 
from  behind  the  proscenium  to  the  center  of  the  orchestra. 
Such  an  arrangement  is  probably  what  Pollux  referred  to  as 
"Charon's  steps''^  and  was  convenient  when  an  actor  was  to 
make  an  appearance  from  the  earth  or,  like  the  ghost  of  Darius 
in  Aeschylus'  Persians,  from  some  structure  which  might 
temporarily  be  erected  in  the  orchestra.  Somewhat  similar 
passages  have  been  found  in  several  other  theaters,  including 
Athens,  but  because  of  their  size  or  other  considerations  seem 
not  to  have  been  used  by  actors.  The  downward  pitch  of  the 
parodus,  owing  to  the  excavations,  is  clearly  seen  in  Fig.  55. 
The  marble  proscenium  is  thought  to  have  been  about  eleven 

^  Cf.  Pollux  Onomasticon  iv,  §  132: '  0.I  Xapd)vioL  KXlfiuKes, 


yjc.  55— The  Theater  at  Eretria  as  Seen  from  the  Northwest 


See  p.  104,  n.  2 


Fig.  57.— The  Scene-Building  of  the  Theater  at  Orupus 
See  p.  108,  n.  i 


m 


INTRODUCTION  107 

and  a  haK  feet  high  and  was  supported  by  rimmed  columns 
(Fig.  72,  jb).  The  parascenia  did  not  project  from  this  but 
merely  continued  the  line  of  the  proscenium,  as  in  many  of  the 
Asia  Minor  theaters.  Traces  of  tracks  for  the  wheels  of  an 
eccyclema  (see  pp.  2845.,  below)  are  said  to  have  been  found  in 
this  theater  on  a  level  with  the  logium,^  but  the  stones  have  now 
disappeared  and  their  purpose  is  not  free  from  doubt. 

Inscriptions  in  the  island  of  Delos^  show  that  contractors 
received  payment  for  a  scene-building  and  proscenium  in  290  B.C. 
Panels  (TlvaKes)  for  the  proscenium  are  mentioned  in  282  B.C. 
Wood  for  the  "logium  of  the  scene-building"  was  paid  for  in 
279  B.C.  Extensive  repairs  and  improvements  seem  to  have  been 
carried  through  in  274  B.C.  Stone  was  provided  for  the  para- 
scenium  in  269  B.C.  Wood  was  used  for  "panels  for  the  logium" 
in  180  B.C.  These  were  probably  used  to  close  large  openings  in 
the  episcenium  (see  the  dvpcofxara  at  Oropus  on  p.  109,  below). 
Most  of  these  entries  refer  to  wooden  construction  and  antedate 
the  extant  remains  in  stone.  There  is  no  orchestra  in  the  more 
restricted  sense,  but  a  gutter  extends  for  about  two-thirds  of  a 
circumference.  If  prolonged,  this  would  just  reach  the  front 
wall  of  the  scene-building  but  would  have  a  large  segment  sub- 
tended by  the  proscenium.  The  scene-building  is  an  oblong 
with  three  doors  in  front  and  one  in  the  rear.  It  is  bounded  on 
all  four  sides  by  a  portico  about  nine  and  a  third  feet  high.  The 
front  of  this  formed  the  proscenium,  and  it  is  clear  that  what  was 
an  ornament  and  certainly  not  a  stage  on  the  other  three  sides 
was  primarily  an  ornament  and  certainly  not  a  stage  also  on  the 
fourth  side.  The  oblong  pillars,  which  were  left  plain  on  the 
other  three  sides  of  the  building,  on  this  side  have  their  front 
surfaces  rounded  off  into  half-columns,  and  a  vertical  rim 
expedited  the  insertion  of  panels  (Fig.  72,  3).  There  were  no 
parascenia  in  the  stone  theater  except  as  these  were  provided 

'  Cf.  Fossum  in  American  Journal  of  Archaeology,  II  (1898),  187  ff.  and  PI.  IV; 
see  p.  288,  n.  2,  below. 

'  A  convenient  series  of  excerpts  from  the  Delian  inscriptions  is  given  by 
Haigh,  The  Attic  Theatre^,  pp.  379  ff. 


lo8  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

by  the  ends  of  the  side  porticos.  The  inscriptions,  however, 
would  seem  to  indicate  that  the  situation  had  previously  been 
different.  From  the  front  corners  of  the  colonnade  slanting 
doorways  extended  across  the  parodi.  In  the  orchestra  several 
bases  stand  in  front  of  the  proscenium,  probably  for  the  erection 
of  statues  or  votive  offerings. 

There  are  theaters  also  at  Delphi  (Fig.  26),  Megalopolis 
(Figs.  27  and  72,  la),  and  Sicyon,  but  it  is  not  possible  to  discuss 
every  theater  on  the  Greek  mainland.  We  must  not,  however, 
_mss  by  the  small  theater  at  Oropus  in  northern  Attica  (Figs. 
56  f.  and  72,  4).'  It  stood  in  the  precinct  of  Amphiaraus  and 
dates  from  the  first  and  second  centuries  B.C.  The  auditorium 
is  almost  completely  destroyed ;  evidently  the  seats  were  always 
wooden  bleachers.  Five  marble  thrones,  however,  stand  within 
the  orchestra,  an  unusual  arrangement  which  recurs  at  Priene 
(see  p.  113,  below).  Another  peculiarity  is  that  no  orchestra,  in 
the  narrowest  sense,  is  marked  out,  either  in  whole  or  in  part.  But 
if  a  circle  is  drawn  through  the  seats  of  honor,  as  has  been  done 
in  Fig.  56,  it  falls  just  outside  the  proscenium.  On  the  contrary,  a 
circle  as  determined  by  the  lowest  row  of  seats  cuts  into  the 
proscenium  slightly.  The  parodi  have  been  banked  up  so  that 
their  outer  entrances  are  on  a  level  with  the  top  of  the  pro- 
scenium. The  chief  merit  of  this  theater  consists  in  the  fact 
that  the  superior  preservation  of  its  scene-building  and  the 
presence  of  two  inscriptions  enable  us  to  form  a  fairly  clear 
picture  of  how  a  proscenium  and  an  episcenium  looked  at  this 
period.  The  front  wall  of  the  scene-building  is  pierced  by  one 
door;  the  side  walls  are  continued  so  as  to  frame  the  proscenium 
but  themselves  turn  sharply  back  along  the  parodi  without  form- 
ing projecting  parascenia.  The  proscenium  consisted  of  Doric 
haff-columns  and  was  eight  and  a  quarter  feet  high.  Its  central 
intercolumniation  was  intended  to  be  filled  by  a  door,  but  the 
four  on  either  side  were  so  made  as  to  be  readily  filled  in  with 
painted  panels  (Fig.  72,4).     Across  the  architrave  ran  an  inscrip- 

'  Fig.  56  is  taken  from  Dorpfeld-Reisch,  Das  griechische  Theater,  Fig.  35;  and 
Fig.  57  is  from  a  photograph  of  the  German  Archaeological  Institute  at  Athens. 


INTRODUCTION 


109 


tion:  "  .  .  .  .  having  been  agonothete,  dedicated  the  proscenium 
and  the  panels."  Another  inscription  ran  along  the  top  of  the 
episcenium:  "  .  .  .  .  having  been  priest,  dedicated  the  scene- 
building  and  the  doors. "^    The  last  item  refers  to  five  (or  three) 


I    I    I    I    ,1 


Fig.  56. — Ground  Plan  of  the  Theater  at  Oropus  in  Attica 
See  p.  108,  n.  i 

large  openings  in  the  front  wall  of  the  episcenium.  Similar 
doors  are  found  at  Ephesus,  and  they  were  doubtless  used  in  con- 
nection with  the  crane  (ixrjxavv,  see  pp.  67  f.,  above,  and  p.  289, 

'  .  .  .  .  ilyuvodeTT^crai  rb  irpouK'ffviov  koL  tov$  'iriv[aKaSj  and  ....  iepei)]j  yevS- 

fjxvoi TTjv  <TKr)vr)v  Kai  to,  dvpd)n{(iTa.  tQ>  'AiJ.]<ptapdi{>.     For  the  functions  of 

an  agonothete,  see  pp.  271  f.,  below.  For  the  dvptifiara,  cf.  Dorpfeld  in  Athenische 
Mittheilungen,  XXVIII  (1903),  394,  and  Jahrhuch  d.  arch.  InstUuts,  Anzeiger,  XXX 
(1915),  102;  wrongly  interpreted  in  Das  griechische  Theater,  p.  109. 


no 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


below).    All  in  all,  Oropus  contributes  very  materially  to  our 
knowledge  of  the  ancient  theater. 

Beginning  with  the  first  century  B.C.  the  only  kind  of  Greek 
theater  which  was  newly  built  was  what  Dorpfeld  calls  the 
Graeco-Roman  type,  cf.  the  theaters  at  Termessus  (Fig.  58)' 


r 


Fig.  58. — Ground  Plan  of  the  Graeco-Roman  Theater  at  Termessus 
See  p.  no,  n.  i 

and  Aspendus  in  Asia  Minor.  During  this  period  several  Hell^i- 
istic  theaters  (e.g.,  those  at  Priene,  Magnesia,  Tralles,  Pergamum 
[fig.  28],  Athens  [?],  Syracuse,  Pompeii,  etc.)  were  remodeled 
to  the  Graeco-Roman  type.  That  this  is  a  Greek  and  not  a 
Roman  form  of  theater  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  its  orchestra, 
though  no  longer  a  complete  circle,  yet  exceeded  a  semicircum- 

'  Fig.  58  is  taken  from  Athenische  Mittheilungen,  XXII  (1897),  PI.  X. 


Fig.  59. — The  Proscenium  of  the  Graeco-Roman  Theater  at  Ephesus 
See  p.  HI,  n.  2 


Fig.  64.— The  Theater  at  Priene  as  Seen  from  the  Southeast 
See  p.  113,  n.  1 


INTRODUCTION  IH 

ference  (see  p.  77,  above).  These  theaters  had  a  stage  varying 
from  eight  to  ten  feet  in  height  and  from  eleven  and  a  half  to 
twenty  in  depth.  The  scene-buildings  were  of  three  stories — 
hyposcenium,  logimn,  and  theologium  (Fig.  24).  The  first 
presented  to  the  spectator  an  undecorated  wall  with  doors  lead- 
ing into  the  orchestra;  the  second  was  terminated  by  a  pro- 
scenium with  columns  and  statues.  The  proscenium  was  seldom 
so  simple  as  in  the  earlier  theaters  but  was  an  ornamental  fagade 
with  projections  and  recesses  (Fig.  59),  which  added  materially 
to  the  area  of  the  stage. 

Hellenistic  theaters  could  be  remodeled  either  (a)  by  build- 
ing a  new  (undecorated)  wall  in  front  of  the  old  proscenium  and 
roofing  the  two  over  to  form  a  stage  or  (b)  by  moving  back  the 
front  wall  of  the  scene-building  slightly  and  constructing  a  stage 
between  this  and  the  old  proscenium.^  In  either  case,  a  new 
(decorated)  proscenium  would  be  erected  at  the  back  of  the 
stage.  In  the  latter  case,  the  columns  of  the  old  proscenium 
would  either  be  removed  and  a  blank  surface  built  in  their  stead 
or  they  would  be  walled  up.  As  already  explained  (see  p.  86, 
above)  this  was  done  because  the  floor  of  the  stage  was  thought 
of  as  representing  earth  or  a  street.  At  Priene  (Fig.  64)  the 
Hellenistic  columns  were  left  standing,  but  this  is  the  sole 
instance  of  a  Graeco-Roman  hyposcenium  having  columns. 

Method  (a)  is  illustrated  at  Ephesus  (Figs.  24  and  59-62),^ 
where  the  first  permanent  scene-building  was  built  about  300  B.C. 
(Fig.  60).  The  dotted  lines  show  the  position  of  the  stone 
proscenium,  eight  and  a  half  feet  high  and  nine  feet  ten  inches 
deep,  which  was  erected  in  the  first  century  B.C.  (Fig.  61). 
There  were  no  parascenia.  The  seven  openings  (^upcojuara)  in  the 
episceniimi  furnish  an  interesting  parallel  to  the  five  at  Oropus 
(see  p.  109,  above).     In  the  last  half  of  the  first  century  a.d.  this 

'  Cf.  Dorpfeld  in  Athenische  Mittheilungen,  XXII  (1897),  458,  and  XXVIII 
(1903),  429. 

*  Fig.  59  is  taken  from  Niemann's  drawing  in  Forschungen  in  Ephesos,  II, 
PI.  VIII;  and  Figs.  60-62  are  from  drawings  by  Wilberg,  ibid.,  Figs.  5,  56,  and 
57,  respectively.  Cf.  also  Dorpfeld,  "Das  Theater  von  Ephesos,"  Jahrbuch  d,  arch. 
Instituts,  Anzeiger,  XXVIII  (1913),  37  ff. 


112 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


structure  was  converted  into  a  Graeco-Roman  type  (Figs.  24 
and  62).  The  new  logium  was  left  of  the  same  height  as  the 
old  proscenium,  but  was  made  nearly  twenty  feet  deep;  and  at 


Imti    I    I    I    I    t    I    I    »    1 


Fig.  60. — Ground  Plan  of  the  Early  Hellenistic  Theater  at  Ephesus 
See  p.  Ill,  n.  2 

certain  points  this  depth  received  a  considerable  accession  from 
the  recesses  of  the  new  proscenium  (Fig.  59).  These  changes 
were  made  at  the  expense  of  the  orchestra,  which  derived  some 
compensation  from  the  fact  that  several  rows  of  the  lowest  seats 


INTRODUCTION 


"3 


were  removed;  as  a  result  the  orchestra  became  a  sort  of  pit 
(Fig.  24).  The  hyposcenium  was  plain  and  was  pierced  by- 
three  doors  leading  into  the  orchestra.  The  top  story  of  the 
proscenium  in  Fig.  59  was  not  added  until  the  third  century  a.d. 
Method  (b)  was  employed  at  Priene  (Figs.  63  f.).^  This 
theater  enjoys  the  distinction  of  being  the  only  one  in  which  an 
altar  was  found,  and  this  was  not  situated  in  the  center  of  the 
orchestra,  as  the  foundations  at  Athens  and  Epidaurus  would 


Fig.  61. — The  Later  Hellenistic  Theater  at  Ephesus:    Above,  Elevation  of 
Proscenium  and  Episcenium;  Below,  Ground  Plan  of  Proscenium  and  Parodi. 

See  p.  Ill,  n.  2 


seem  to  indicate  was  the  case  there,  but  on  its  circumference. 
Seats  of  honor  were  placed  in  the  orchestra,  as  at  Oropus  (see 
p.  108,  above) ;  but  in  Roman  times  new  seats  for  dignitaries 
were  erected  in  the  center  of  the  fifth  row  of  seats  (Fig.  63) .  The 
proscenium  was  of  the  same  age  as  the  scene-building  and  belongs 
to  the  third  century  B.C.  At  the  Graeco-Roman  rebuilding  the 
columns  of  this  proscenium  were  left  standing,  but  the  inter- 
columniations,  except  the  three  which  served  as  doors,  were 
walled  up.    The  front  wall  of  the  Hellenistic  episcenium  was  torn 

'  Fig.  63  is  redrawn  from  Athenische  Mittheilungen,  XXIII  (1898),  PI.  XI;  the 
cross-hatched  walls  belong  to  the  Graeco-Roman  rebuilding.  Fig.  64  is  from  a 
photograph  taken  by  Professor  C.  P.  Bill  and  furnished  by  Dr.  A.  S.  Cooley. 


114 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


down  and  a  new  proscenium  was  built  about  six  and  a  half  feet 
farther  back  (see  cross-hatched  wall  in  Fig.  63). 

The  height  of  the  Graeco-Roman  stage  as  compared  with  the 
low  Roman  stage  was  partly  due  to  convenience  in  remodeling    | 


Fig.  62. — Ground  Plan  of  the  Graeco-Roman  Theater  at  Ephesus 
See  p.  Ill,  n.  2 

when  it  was  kept  at  the  same  figure  as  the  earlier  proscenium, 
but  mostly  to  the  conditions  of  exhibition.^  The  Greeks  did  not, 
like  the  Romans,  sit  in  their  orchestras.  Choral  and  musical 
competitions  still  were  held  there,  as  well  as  such  Roman  sports 

'  Cf.  Dorpfeld,  in  Athenische  Mitikeilungen,  XXII  (1897),  456  ff. 


INTRODUCTION 


"5 


as  gladiatorial  and  animal  combats.     It  was  necessary,  therefore, 
that  the  orchestra  should  be  accessible  from  the  hyposcenium,  and 


Fig.  63. — Ground  Plan  and  Cross-Section  of  the  Theater  at  Priene 
See  p.  113,  n.  i 

the  doors  could  scarcely  be  lower  than  six  and  a  half  or  seven  feet. 
Accordingly,  the  stage  could  hardly  be  less  than  eight  feet  high. 


ii6  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

But  the  seats  of  honor  in  Greek  theaters  had  always  been  in 
the  lowest  tier  (nearest  the  orchestra),  and  from  there  the  view 
of  dramatic  performances,  when  presented  upon  an  eight-  or 
ten-foot  stage,  would  be  seriously  obstructed.^  Usually  when 
such  theaters  were  remodeled,  as  at  Ephesus,  Assus,  Pergamum, 
and  Delphi,  enough  tiers  were  removed  so  that  the  lowest  seats 
would  be  only  about  five  feet  below  the  stage  level.  The 
orchestra  thus  became  like  a  pit  and  was  inclosed  with  vertical 
walls  (Fig.  24).  At  Side  the  space  from  which  seats  had  been 
removed  was  built  over  with  a  six-foot  wall,  which  was  especially 
suitable  in  view  of  the  gladiatorial  and  animal  fights  of  Roman 
times.  Where  the  auditorium  was  not  altered,  as  at  Priene  and 
Magnesia,  it  is  supposed  that  the  lowest  seats  were  unoccupied 
at  dramatic  performances,  but  were  put  to  use,  as  the  best  places, 
at  orchestral  sports  and  contests. 

As  to  the  function  of  the  dramatic  chorus  in  the  period  of  the 
Graeco-Roman  theaters,  especially  in  Asia  Minor,  we  have  little 
information.  Nevertheless,  it  is  necessary  to  consider  the 
question.  Already  in  Hellenistic  (New)  Comedy  the  chorus 
appeared  only  between  acts  (see  p.  147,  below).  It  is  possible 
that  by  this  time  it  had  disappeared  entirely  or  that  it  was  so 
detached  that,  though  the  comic  actors  stood  on  a  stage,  the 
entr^  actes  could  be  given  in  the  orchestra,  or  that  its  numbers 
were  so  reduced  (see  p.  135,  below)  that  it  could  perform  upon  a 
Graeco-Roman  stage — in  any  case,  the  chorus  in  contempora- 
neous comedy  is  negligible.  The  number  of  the  tragic  choreutae 
had  probably  been  reduced  also  (see  p.  134,  below) .  But  what  is 
still  more  significant  is  that,  if  the  fragments  of  Roman  drama 
are  any  criterion^  the  tragic  choruses  had  abandoned  the  strophic 
responsions  of  the  old  Greek  tragedy,  and  this  means  the  aban- 
donment of  the  compHcated  evolutions  which  had  carried  the 
chorus  over  the  full  expanse  of  the  ancient  orchestra.  It  was 
quite  feasible  for  a  small  chorus  which  sang  astrophic  odes,  spoke 

'  Cf.  Dorpfeld,  ibid.,  XXII  (1897),  458 f.;  XXIII  (1898),  337;  and  XXVIII 
(1903),  426. 

'  Cf.  Duckett,  Studies  in  Ennius  (1915),  p.  70. 


INTRODUCTION  117 

through  its  coryphaeus,  and  danced  in  a  restricted  fashion  to 
appear  upon  a  Graeco-Roman  stage  with  the  actors,  to  be  closely 
connected  with  the  plot,  and  even  to  participate  in  the  action. 
As  to  the  reproduction  of  old  plays,  the  situation  was  not  espe- 
cially different.  Fifth-century  comedies  were  probably  never  re- 
peated at  this  period.  New  Comedy,  as  we  have  just  seen,  would 
present  little  difficulty.  As  to  old  tragedies,  the  choral  parts 
could  be  excised  ad  libitum  or  sung  on  the  stage  by  a  reduced 
chorus  without  dancing  (or  at  least  without  evolutions).  It  will 
be  remembered  that  I  do  not  accept  Dorpfeld's  opinion  that  the 
Nero  stage  at  Athens  was  of  the  Graeco-Roman  type.  Accord- 
ingly, I  believe  that  different  physical  conditions  and  the  glory  of 
their  traditions  kept  up  a  livelier  interest  in  the  dramatic  chorus 
at  Athens  than  elsewhere  and  still  retained  the  Athenian  orches- 
tra as  the  normal  place  of  activity  for  the  dramatic  choreutae 
(see  p.  99,  above). 

The  foregoing  account  shows  that  there  are  many  points  of 
dispute  with  regard  to  the  Greek  theater  and  many  points 
concerning  which  no  one  can  do  aught  but  guess.  In  closing, 
let  me  repeat  that  we  are  interested  in  the  Greek  theater  mainly 
because  of  the  Greek  drama  and  that  the  extant  pieces  belong 
almost  exclusively  to  the  fifth  century  B.C.  Now  for  that  century 
the  irreducible  minimum,  as  shown  by  the  plays  themselves,  is 
that  there  can  have  been  no  place,  elevated  much  or  Httle,  which 
^  was  reserved  exclusively  for  the  actors. 


In  the  case  of  the  drama  the  religious 
origin  and  the  persisting  religious  meaning 
are  self-evident.  Performed  at  a  festival 
of  Dionysus,  beside  his  temple,  in  the 
presence  of  his  altar  and  his  priest, 
tragedy  and  comedy  are  the  natural 
response  to  that  Greek  demand  for  the 
enrichment  of  worship  by  art. — Arthur 
Fairbanks. 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  INFLUENCE  OF  RELIGIOUS  ORIGIN' 

If  a  modern  theatergoer  could  be  suddenly  set  down  in 
ancient  Athens,  perhaps  one  of  the  first  things  to  surprise  him 
would  be  the  discovery  that  he  could  not  have  recourse  to 
his  favorite  recreation  any  day  that  he  might  choose.  Of  course, 
this  situation  resulted  from  the  fact  that  ancient  drama  was 
connected  with  reHgion,  was  part  of  some  god's  worship,  and  as 
such  could  be  presented  only  at  the  time  of  his  festivals.  This 
patron  deity  was  uniformly  Dionysus  (Bacchus),  god  of  wine, 
for  the  reason  that  tragedy  and  satyric  drama  were  offshoots  of 
the  Dionysiac  dithyramb  (see  pp.  2-4  and  6  f .,  above)  and  that 
the  comus  (/ccojuos),  from  which  comedy  had  developed  (see  p.  7,6, 
above)  had  a  meaning  and  function  similar  to  those  of  certain 
rites  of  Dionysus  and  in  the  course  of  time  was  brought  into 
connection  with  his  worship.  At  Athens,  Dionysus  had  several 
festivals,  but  only  two  at  which  plays  were  performed,  viz.,  the 
City  Dionysia  and  the  Lenaea.  Thanks  to  the  labors  of  many 
scholars  and  the  finding  of  additional  inscriptional  evidence 
our  information  concerning  these  occasions,  though  still  far 
from  complete,  is  somewhat  less  scanty  than  it  has  been,^  At 
the  City  Dionysia  tragedy  dated  from  534  B.C.,  while  comedy 
was  not  given  ofl&cial  recognition  there  until  486  B.C.  Though 
the  Lenaea  was  the  older  festival,  its  dramatic  features  were  later, 
comedy  being  added  about  442  B.C.  and  tragedy  about  433  B.C. 
It  ought  to  be  stated,  however,  that  at  both  festivals  there  had 
been  volunteer,  unofiicial  performances  of  primitive  comedy 
(koojuoi)  prior  to  the  dates  just  given,  when  the  state  took  them 

'  Cf.  the  works  mentioned  on  pp.  xvii  and  xx  f.,  above.  There  is  no  special 
literature  on  this  subject. 

*Cf.  chaps,  iv  and  ix  and  the  bibliographies  on  pp.  196  and  318,  below. 

119 


I20  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

under  its  formal  protection.  The  comus  was  introduced  into 
the  Lenaean  festival  between  580  B.C.  and  560  B.C.,  and  into  the 
program  of  the  City  Dionysia  about  501  B.C.  (see  p.  24). 

Now  if  our  imaginary  modern  visitor  to  ancient  Athens 
chanced  to  be  somewhat  acquainted  with  the  history  of  mediaeval 
drama,  he  would  probably  surmise  that  the  close  connection 
between  Greek  drama  and  religious  festivals  would  result  in  the 
plays  being  performed  in  temples,  just  as  mysteries  and  miracle 
plays  were  originally  presented  in  the  churches.  But  in  this 
he  would  be  much  mistaken.  There  is  a  fundamental  difiference 
in  function  between  a  Greek  temple  and  a  Christian  church. 
The  latter  is  primarily  intended  as  a  place  for  congregational 
worship,  and  its  size  and  interior  arrangements  are  chosen 
accordingly.  On  the  other  hand,  the  temple  was  pre-eminently 
thought  of  as  the  earthly  abode  of  some  divinity;  it  was,  there- 
fore, uniformly  too  small  to  accommodate  any  considerable 
crowd,  neither  was  its  interior  well  adapted  for  that  purpose. 
In  the  second  place,  the  worshipers  at  an  ancient  shrine  were  not 
more  or  less  rigidly  restricted  to  a  hst  of  members  with  their 
more  intimate  relatives,  neighbors,  and  friends,  as  is  the  case 
with  a  Protestant  church  today.  In  most  cases,  any  free- 
born  citizen  would  feel  as  free  to  worship  at  any  particular 
temple  or  to  take  part  in  its  festivals  as  could  any  other  citizen, 
and  on  no  infrequent  occasions  practically  the  whole  body  of 
.citizens  was  present.  In  fact,  so  important  was  it  deemed  that 
everyone  should  attend  the  dramatic  festivals  that  toward  the 
end  of  the  fifth  century  it  was  provided  that  whoever  felt  unable 
to  pay  the  daily  admission  fee  of  two  obols^  should,  upon  applica- 
tion, receive  a  grant  for  this  purpose  from  the  state. ,'  "The  whole 
city  kept  holiday,  and  gave  itself  up  to  pleasure,  and  to  the 
worship  of  the  wine-god.  Business  was  abandoned;  the  law- 
courts  were  closed ;  distraints  for  debt  were  forbidden  during  the 
continuance  of  the  festival;  even  prisoners  were  released  from 
jail,  to  enable  them  to  share  in  the  common  festivities."^     Boys 

'  A  drachma  contained  six  obols  and  was  worth  about  eighteen  cents  without 
making  allowance  for  the  greater  purchase  value  of  money  in  antiquity. 

*  Cf.  Haigh,  The  Attic  Theatre  (3d  ed.  by  Pickard-Cambridge,  1907),  p.  i. 


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THE  INFLUENCE  OF  RELIGIOUS  ORIGIN  121 


and  slaves  were  admitted,  if  their  fathe^||fctheir  masters  were 
willing  to  pay  their  way.  It  seems^^^Hfh  the  evidence  is 
inconclusive/  that  despite  the  orien^HIre  seclusion  of  Greek 
households  even  women  and  girls  mighfattend.  They  certainly 
participated  in  the  ceremonies  of  the  first  day.  Plato  and 
Aristotle  favored  restricting  the  attendance,  but  their  viejt^ 
seem  to  have  had  no  effect.  Thus,  children  and  respectable  ' 
women  who  would  have  invited  divorce*  by  being  present  at  real 
scenes  of  that  character  were  allowed  to  witness  the  indecencies 
of  satyric  drama  and  Old  Comedy  and  to  listen  to  the  broadest 
of  jokes.     Such  is  the  power  of  religious  conservatism. 

From  these  considerations  it  follows  that  the  attendance 
upon  the  dramatic  performances  was  enormous,  and  that  the  use 
of  temples  to  accommodate  the  spectators  was  entirely  out  of 
the  question.  Therefore  it  became  necessary  to  provide  a 
separate  structure,  which  in  fourth-century  Athens  could  seat 
as  many  as  seventeen  thousand.  From  this  fact  arose  thV 
further  necessity  for  an  annual  procession,  in  order  to  escort  the 
statue  of  Dionysus  from  his  temple  to  his  theater.  Since  the  two 
buildings  were  situated  in  the  same  precinct  on  the  south  slope 
of  the  Acropolis  and  within  a  few  feet  of  each  other  (Figs.  29 
and  32),  there  was  no  need  of  the  processional  ceremony  being 
other  than  a  -very  simple  one.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  from  the 
spectacular  standpoint  this  was  one  of  the  most  splendid  features 
of  the  festival  and  consumed  the  whole  first  day.  It  has  been 
claimed  that  several  Attic  vases,  dating  from  the  close  of  the 
sixth  century  B.C.  and  depicting  the  *' wagon-ship"  of  Diony- 
sus, give  a  hint  as  to  the  character  of  this  part  of  the  City 
Dionysia  (Fig  65).''  The  car  is  drawn  by  two  men  representing 
attendant  sprites  of  Dionysus.     The  tip  of  the  long  equine  tail 

*  The  affirmative  side  of  the  question  is  presented  by  Haigh,  op.  cit.,  pp.  324  ff.; 
the  negative  by  Rogers,  Introduction  to  Aristophanes'  Women  in  Council  (1902), 
pp.  xxix  ff. 

'  Cf .  Frickenhaus,  "Der  Schiffskarren  des  Dionysos  in  Athen,"  Jakrbuch  d. 
arch.  Inslituts,  XXVII  (1912),  61  ff.  Fig.  65  originally  appeared  as  Beilage  I, 
Fig.  3,  in  connection  with  this  article.  It  is  taken  from  a  drawing  by  Signor  G. 
Gatti,  a  photograph  of  which  was  furnished  me  through  the  courtesy  of  Professor 
Ghisardini,  Director  of  the  Museo  Civico  at  Bologna. 


122  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


of  one  of  them  is^^rly  indicated.  In  the  car  are  two  other 
sprites,  whether  si^^kr  satyrs,  playing  on  flutes,  and  the  god 
himself  is  seated  bet^^fchem.  Alongside  of  the  sacrificial  bull 
are  two  citizens  standing.  Farther  forward  are  two  youths  with 
branches  (^aXXo^opot),  then  a  youth  with  a  censer,  another  with 
a  basket  (Kavqcfyopos) ,  and  finally,  at  the  head  of  the  procession, 
abgyiwho  is  perhaps  to  be  regarded  as  a  trumpeter.  Whatever 
relationship  may  subsist  between  such  vase  paintings  and  con- 
temporaneous drama  (see  p.  20,  above)  the  entire  free  population, 
from  the  chief  magistrate  of  the  city  (the  archon  eponymus) 
down,  participated  in  the  procession  at  the  CityDionysia  and  took 
the  god's  statue  by  stages  from  his  temple  to  a  point  near  the 
Academy  on  the  road  to  Eleutherae  (Fig.  2).  This  direction  was 
chosen  because,  as  the  Athenian  god's  cognomen  of  Eleuthereus 
shows,  this  image  and  its  cult  were  supposed  to  have  been 
introduced  from  this  town  on  Attica's  northern  border  (see  p.  21 
and  n.  3,  above)  and  because  the  return  of  the  processional  was 
intended  to  imitate  the  final  portion  of  the  original  entry. 
After  the  remainder  of  the  day  had  been  spent  in  rites  and 
festivities  the  procession  escorted  the  sacred  rehc  back  to  its 
precinct  by  torchlight  and  placed  it  near  the  orchestra  in,  the 
theater,  where  it  remained  during  the  rest  of  the  festival  Thus 
the  god  was  supposed  to  have  witnessed  every  play  presented  at 
the  City  Dionysia  from  534  B.C.  on,  and  it  is  as  a  connoisseur  and 
critic  of  wide  experience  that  he  is  appointed  to  judge  between 
the  rival  claims  of  Aeschylus  and  Euripides  in  Aristophanes' 
Frogs,  vss.  810  f.  -Our  EngHsh  and  Protestant  ideas  concerning^ 
the  nature  of  a  religious  ceremony  are  only  too  likely  to  give  us  a 
misleading  conception  of  the  whole  festival  and  especially  of  its 
first  day.  The  festa  of  some  popular  saint  in  Southern  Europe, 
who  demands  the  veneration  of  his  people  and  yet  is  broad- 
minded  enough  to  enter  into  the  spirit  of  the  occasion  and  is  not 
offended  even  by  being  made  the  subject  of  rolHcking  jests, 
would  afford  a  far  better  parallel,  and  even  this  falls  short. 
Drunkenness  combined  with  the  darkness  at  the  close  of  the 
day's  proceedings  to  intensify  the  license  natural  on  such  an 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  RELIGIOUS  ORIGIN  123 

occasion.  Children  born  as  the  result  of  chance  meetings  at 
these  annually  recurring  processions  are  frequently  mentioned 
in  New  Comedy  and  often  motivate  the  action.^ 

y/  Nevertheless,  the  religious  character  of  these  festivals  and  of 
the  dramatic  exhibitions  connected  with  them  was  a  very  real 
thing  to  the  Greeks,  and  everyone  in  attendance  would  fully 

I  reahze  that  he  was  present  at  no  secular  proceeding.  To  a 
mediaeval  spectator  of  miracle  plays  and  mysteries  this  feeling' 
would  seem  perfectly  natural,  but  it  would  be  another  occasion 
of  surprise  to  a  modern  visitor.  Already  in  Elizabethan  times 
Shakespeare  could  assure  his  audience:  ''Our  true  intent  is  all 
for  your  delight."  So  exclusively  is  this  now  the  motive  of 
theatrical  performances  that  we  seldom  think  of  the  theater  as  a 
place  for  the  inculcation  of  religious  truths  or  for  teaching  the 

^:  facts  of  religious  history.    It  follows  that  the  subject-matter  of 

_^  fireak  drama  was  drawn  from  their  mythology  as  inevitably  and 
uniformly  as  the  text  of  a  modern  sermon  is  drawn  from  the 
jBible.  In  fact,  freedom  of  choice  was  originally  still  more 
restricted.  Whether  tragedy  was  derived  from  satyric  drama 
and  satyric  drama  from  the  dithyramb  or  whether,  as  I  beHeve, 
both  tragedy  and  satyric  drama  were  independent  offshoots  of 
the  dithyramb  (see  pp.  2-4),  this  remains  true — the  early  dithy- 
ramb was  exclusively  devoted  to  the  exaltation  of  Dionysus,  and 
in  consequence  the  themes  of  tragedy  and  of  satyric  drama  were 
likewise,  at  the  beginning,  entirely  Dionysiac.  By  the  time 
of  Thespis  or  soon  thereafter  (see  pp.  20  f.,  above)  tragedy 
broadened  out  so  as  to  treat  any  mythological  theme.  Of  the 
thirty-two  extant  Greek  tragedies  Dionysus  appears  in  only  one, 

'  Cf .  Plautus'  The  Casket,  vss.  89  f . : 

per  Dionysia 

mater  pompam  me  spectatum  duxit, 
and  vss.  156  ff.: 

fuere  Sicyoni  iam  diu  Dionysia. 

mercator  venit  hue  ad  ludos  Lerrmius, 

isque  hie  compressit  virginem,  adulescentulus, 

<vi>,  vinulentus,  multa  nocte,  in  via. 
For  the  differences  between  Old  Comedy,  Middle  Comedy,  and  New  Comedy,  see 
p.  39,  above. 


124   '  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

Euripides'  Bacchanals,  and  even  in  that  he  is  disguised  during 
most  of  the  play.  But  the  playwrights  were  not  content  to  stop 
at  this  point.  Phrynichus,  who  was  a  pupil  of  Thespis  and  won 
his  first  victory  in  5 1 1  B.C.,  introduced  the  innovation  of  dramatiz- 
ing contemporaneous  history.  In  494  B.C.  the  Persians  captured 
and  destroyed  the  Ionic  city  of  Miletus.  Shortly  thereafter 
Phrynichus  treated  this  subject  in  a  tragedy.  Though  it  moved 
the  Athenians  to  tears,  they  were  so  indignant  at  being  reminded 
of  the  misfortunes  of  their  kinsmen  that  they  fined  the  poet  one 
thousand  drachmae.  Undeterred  by  this  rebuff,  however,  in 
476  B.C.  Phrynichus  brought  out  his  Phoenician  Women,  dealing 
with  the  Persian  invasion  of  Greece  in  480-479  B.C.  This 
play  served  as  a  model  for  Aeschylus'  Persians  (472  B.C.)  on 
the  same  subject.  But  by  laying  the  scenes  of  these  plays 
in  Asia  Minor  or  Persia  the  dramatists  gained  remoteness  of 
place  instead  of  the  usual  remoteness  of  time.  As  Racine^  wrote 
on  a  similar  occasion:  "The  general  public  makes  hardly  any 
distinction  between  that  which  is  removed  from  them  by  a 
thousand  years  or  by  a  thousand  leagues."  A  still  further 
innovation  was  made  toward  the  close  of  the  fifth  century  by 
Agathon,  in  whose  Antheus  both  incidents  and  character  names 
were  entirely  fictitious.  A  very  similar  development  can  be 
traced  in  mediaeval  times.  Originally  the  gospel  story  was  the 
theme,  then  subordinate  incidents  of  Scripture,  then  the  lives 
of  saints  since  Bible  times,  then  allegorical  tales,  etc. 

But  in  practice  Greek  tragedians  did  not  avail  themselves 
of  their  liberty.  Agathon's  innovation  was  not  followed  up; 
and  though  the  Greeks  did  not  sharply  differentiate  mythology 
and  history,^  they  did  not  take  kindly  to  the  treatment  of  con- 
temporary events  in  tragedy.  The  three  plays  above  mentioned 
exhaust  the  instances  at  Athens.  Even  in  mythological  subjects 
experimentation  soon  led  them  to  confine  themselves  to  the 
stories  of  a  few  houses — -to  the  misfortunes  of  Oedipus,  Orestes, 
Meleager,  Thyestes,  etc.     This  tendency  is  illustrated  by  the 

^  Cf .  his  Preface  to  Bajazet. 

'  Cf.  Ribbeck,  Rheinisches  Museum,  XXX  (1875),  145. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  RELIGIOUS  ORIGIN  125 

fact  that  three  of  the  extant  tragedies,  Aeschylus'  Libation- 
Bearers,  Sophocles'  Electra,  and  Euripides'  play  of  the  same  name, 
ring  the  changes  upon  the  same  topic.  Since  almost  every 
playwright  of  consequence  would  turn  his  hand  to  these  oft-tried 
themes^the  only  chance  of  success  necessarily  lay  in  improving 
upon  the  dramatic  technique  and  the  elaboration  of  character 
and  plot  already  displayed  by  one's  rivals.  As  Aristotle  wrote,^ 
each  poet  was  expected  "to  surpass  that  which  was  the  strong 
point  of  each  of  his  predecessors."  We  are  therefore  not  sur- 
prised to  learn  from  the  same  source  that  in  his  day  the  finest 
tragedies  were  based  upon  these  hackneyed  subjects.  Further- 
more, the  practice  is  commended  by  so  high  a  modern  authority 
as  Goethe:  "If  I  were  to  begin  my  artistic  life  over  again,  I 
should  never  deal  with  a  new  story.  I  should  always  invest  the 
old  stories  with  new  and  more  vital  meanings." 

The  poets'  choice  of  tragic  themes  from  traditional  my thology 
does  not  mean  that  their  material  was  rigid  and  intractable. 
They  enjoyed  entire  freedom  to  revamp  the  old  tales,  by  inven- 
tion, alteration,  or  suppression,  in  order  to  suit  their  own  pur- 
poses. Here  again  the  practice  of  the  mediaeval  playwrights, 
though  more  restricted  to  minor  matters,  affords  the  best  clue. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  fact  that  most  spectators  knew  at  least 
the  general  outline  of  his  plot  in  advance  allowed  the  ancient 
dramatist  to  introduce  numerous  subtleties  that  are  quite  beyond 
the  reach  of  modern  playwrights  (see  pp.  315  f.,  below).  It  is 
true,  as  Aristotle^  warns  us,  that  "even  the  known  stories  were 
known  only  to  a  few."  Nevertheless,  the  more  intelligent  in  the 
audience  would  always  be  well  informed,  and  of  the  oft-repeated 
tragic  themes  even  the  most  stupid  could  hardly  remain  in 
ignorance. 

In  the  case  of  satyric  drama  the  situation  was  naturally 
somewhat  different.  Whatever  the  relationship  between  the 
dithyramb,  satyr-play,  and  tragedy,  the  fact  remains  that  the 
satyr-play  was  placed  in  the  program  of  the  City  Dionysia 

"  Cf.  Aristotle's  Poetics  145606  and  1453019. 
'  Cf.  ibid.,  1451^25. 


126  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

largely  as  a  concession  to  the  Dionysiac  element.  Consequently, 
Bacchic  themes  were  retained  in  the  satyric  drama  long  after 
they  had  been  abandoned  by  tragedy.  Even  so,  it  did  not  take 
long  to  develop  a  secondary  stage  in  which  the  Dionysiac 
element  is  practically  restricted  to  the  appearance  of  Bacchus' 
,  attendant  sprites,  the  chorus  of  satyrs,  who  are  harshly  super- 
'  imposed  upon  some  non-Dionysiac  subject.  Until  recently  our 
direct  information  concerning  the  satyr-play  was  derived  solely 
from  Euripides'  Cyclops,  the  only  extant  representative  of  this 
genre,  but  now  the  major  portion  of  another,  The  Trackers 
(Ichneutae)  by  Sophocles,  has  been  revealed  to  us.''  Both  in  the 
Cyclops  and  now  in  the  Trackers  the  Bacchic  element  is  restricted 
to  Silenus  and  the  chorus  of  satyrs,  and  Dionysus  himself  figures 
only  as  he  is  appealed  to  or  mentioned  in  the  choral  odes  or 
episodes.  How  generally  Bacchus  was  omitted  from  his  own 
special  brand  of  play  we  have  no  means  of  knowing,  but  it  was 
inevitable  that  this  should  not  be  a  rare  occurrence.  The  myths 
in  which  the  wine-god  could  appropriately  appear  in  person  must 
soon  have  been  exhausted;  and  the  playwrights,  more  concerned 
in  producing  an  interesting  performance  than  in  maintaining  an 
outworn  custom,  would  yearn  to  exercise  in  this  field  the  same 
freedom  that  they  had  already  won  for  themselves  in  the  com- 
position of  tragedies.  Even  in  the  two  plays  now  before  us  the 
new  wine  is  fairly  bursting  the  seams  of  the  old  wineskins.  In 
the  Cyclops,  Silenus  and  his  children  are  joined  to  the  story  of 
Odysseus'  adventures  in  Polyphemus'  cave,  in  which  neither 
earlier  mythology  nor  rhyme  or  adequate  reason  had  vouchsafed 
them  a  place.  Their  presence  is  explained  by  the  statement  that 
they  had  set  sail  in  search  of  Dionysus,  after  learning  that  he  had 
been  seized  by  pirates,  were  shipwrecked  near  Mt.  Aetna,  and 
enslaved  by  the  Cyclops  (vss.  iiff.).  The  situation  in  the 
Trackers  is  still  more  forced.  The  play  deals  with  the  theft  of 
Apollo's  cattle  by  the  infant  Hermes.  Upon  the  offer  of  a 
reward,  the  satyrs  turn  detectives  in  order  to  track  down  the 
stolen  beasts.     Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  in  both  plays  the 

'  Cf.  Oxyrhynchns  Papyri,  IX  (191 2),  30  ff. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  RELIGIOUS  ORIGIN  127 

Dionysiac  element  is  a  mechanical,  extraneous  feature  in  the  plot. 
It  is  not  surprising  that  the  dramatic  poets  should  chafe  under  the 
limitations  of  so  clumsy  a  compromise/ 

Yet  again,  in  the  case  of  comedy  the  situation  was  still 
different.  The  embryonic  form  of  comedy,  the  comus,  was 
originally  intended  by  a  sort  of  sympathetic  magic  to  superinduce 
friendly  powers  and  to  expel  malign  spirits,  and  involved  neither 
plot,  unity  of  theme,  nor  fiction.  When  these  features  were 
introduced,  they  were  influenced  by  mature  tragedy  and  by 
the  Sicilian  mime,  which  had  aheady  reached  a  high  stage  of  de- 
velopment (see  pp.  36  f.  and  46-52,  above).  As  a  result,  though 
comedy  had  become  as  much  a  part  of  Dionysiac  worship  as  was 
tragedy  or  satyric  drama,  it  did  not  go  through  a  stage  of 
Bacchic  or  semi-Bacchic  themes,  but  passed  at  once  to  fictitious 
subjects.  The  difference  between  tragedy  and  comedy  in  this 
regard  is  clearly  indicated  by  Antiphanes,  a  poet  of  Middle 
Comedy:* 

Tragedy  is  a  happy  creation  in  every  respect,  since  the  audience  knows 
the  plot  before  ever  a  word  has  been  spoken.  The  tragic  poet  needs  only 
to  awaken  their  memories.  If  I  barely  mention  Oedipus,  they  know  all  the 
rest:   that  his  father  is  Laius,  his  mother  Jocaste,  who  are  his  sons  and 

daughters,  what  he  has  done,  and  what  wUl  befall  him This  is  not 

possible  for  us,  but  we  must  invent  everything:  new  names,  preceding 
events,  the  present  circumstances,  the  catastrophe,  and  the  exposition. 

Furthermore,  the  SiciHan  mime  seems  to  have  been  unassociated 
with  religious  worship,  and  perhaps  this  fact  has  a  share  in 
explaining  the  irreverent,  almost  atheistic,  tendency  which  Attic 
comedy  manifested.  Though  it  was  part  of  divine  worship,  it 
treated  the  divinities  with  the  utmost  disrespect.  Even  Diony- 
sus himself,  the  patron  deity  of  the  festivals,  is  represented  in 
Aristophanes'  Frogs  as  cowardly,  lecherous,  and  foolish,  beaten 
with  many  stripes  before  the  eyes  of  his  worshipers. 

The  Greek  theater  suffered  no  scene  of  bloodshed  to  be 
enacted  before  its  audience.    When  the  plot  of  the  play,  as  was 

'  For  still  further  developments  in  the  history  of  satyric  drama  see  pp.  198  f., 
below. 

*  Cf.  Kock,  Comicorum  Atticoriim  Fragmenta,  II,  90,  fr.  191. 


128  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

not  infrequently  the  case,  required  such  an  incident,  the  harrow- 
ing details  were  narrated  by  a  messenger  who  had  witnessed  the 
event.  In  Aeschylus'  Persians  the  combats  between  Greeks  and 
Asiatics  are  all  narrated.  In  Aeschylus'  Seven  against  Thebes 
and  Euripides'  Phoenician  Maids  the  fatal  duel  between  the 
brothers  occurs  off-stage.  Similarly,  in  Euripides'  Bacchanals 
the  report  is  brought  to  Thebes  that  Pentheus  has  been  torn  to 
pieces  on  Mt,  Cithaeron.  In  these  and  numerous  other  cases 
the  incidents  related  took  place  at  some  distance  from  the 
imaginary  scene.  When  it  is  remembered  that  the  action  of 
Greek  plays  is  usually  laid  before  a  palace  or  temple,  it  will  at 
once  occur  to  everyone  how  conveniently  located  such  a  struc- 
ture was  for  violence  nearer  the  scene  of  action.  Thus,  in  Aeschy- 
lus' Libation-Bearers  (vs.  904)  Orestes  drives  his  mother  indoors 
to  dispatch  her,  and  in  Sophocles'  Electra  he  is  lucky  enough  to 
enter  the  palace  and  find  her  there  alone  and  off  her  guard. 
This  situation  recurred  again  and  again,  and  a  further  refinement 
lay  close  at  hand.  The  hearts  of  the  spectators  were  often 
thrilled  with  tragic  fear  or  pity  by  hearing  from  behind  the 
scenes  the  screams  of  the  dying,  their  cries  for  help,  even  their 
death  rattle.  So  Agamemnon  dies  in  Aeschylus'  play  of  that 
name  (vss.  1343-45);  so  Clytemnestra  in  Sophocles'  Electra 
(vss.  1404  ff.)  and  Euripides'  play  of  the  same  title  (vss.  1 165-67) ; 
so  Lycus  in  Euripides'  Madness  of  Heracles  (vss.  749  and  754); 
and  so  many  another.  The  murder  of  Duncan  in  Macbeth 
shows  that  such  scenes  must  have  been  far  more  effective  than 
any  attempt  at  a  realistic  representation  could  possibly  have 
been.  An  additional  effect  is  sometimes  secured  by  flinging 
open  the  back  scene  and  disclosing  the  dead  forms  within;  cf. 
the  slaughtered  children  of  Heracles  (Euripides'  Madness  of 
Heracles,  vss.  1029  ff.),  Eurydice  (Sophocles'  Antigone,  vs.  1293), 
etc.  Sometimes  death-cries  and  the  opened  scene  are  combined, 
as  in  Aeschylus'  Agamemnon,  vss.  1343-45,  1372  ff.  StiU 
another  artifice  for  avoiding  seen  violence  is  found  in  Euripides' 
Children  of  Heracles,  which  ends  by  Alcmene  and  her  attendants 
dragging  Eurystheus  off  to  his  doom. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  RELIGIOUS  ORIGIN  129 

The  rule  of  Greek  dramaturgy  which  has  just  been  described 
is  Hable  to  one  notable  exception — the  dramatic  characters  may  > 
not  commit  murder  before  the  eyes  of  the  spectators  but  they 
may  commit  suicide  there.    Not,  of  course,  that  all  suicides  ;  V 
must  take  place  within  the  audience's  vision;  most  of  them,  like! 
all  cases  of  manslaughter,  are  reported.    But  the  important  fact 
remains  that  at  least  in  some  instances  suicide  is  enacted  before 
the  spectators'  very  eyes.     So,  in  Sophocles'  Ajax  that  hero  falls 
upon  his  sword  (vs.  865),  and  in  Euripides'  Suppliants  (vs.  107 1) 
Evadne  flings  herself  from  the  rocks  upon  her  husband's  funeral 
pyre.cit  thus  appears  that  it  is  neither  the  bare  fact  of  death 
nor  yet  its  mere  hideousness  which  was  obnoxious  to  ancient    ^ 
taste.    The  first  conclusion  is  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  the  Hf e- 
strength  of  Alcestis  is  allowed  to  ebb  away  upon  the  stage 
(Euripides'  Alcestis,  vs.  391),  and  the  second  by  the  sight  of 
Heracles  racked  by  agonizing  tortures  in  Sophocles'  Maidens 
of   Trachis,   vss.    983  ff.    The    distinction    between    what    is 
permissible   and   what   is   forbidden   seems   to   hinge  upon  a     ;? 
trivial  matter,  viz.,  whether  only  one  character  is  involved  or 
several. 

Passing  now  to  the  raison  d^etre  of  this  practice  I  will  first 
mention  some  minor  considerations.  The  paucity  of  actors  in 
Greek  drama  (see  p.  182,  below)  made  any  representation  of  mass 
effects,  such  as  a  battle,  quite  impossible.  The  lack  of  com- 
pKcated  stage  machinery  prevented  the  melodramatic  actualism 
that  modern  audiences  love  so  well.  Being  thus  unaccustomed 
to  the  more  difficult  feats  of  realism,  the  ancients  had  not  learned 
to  demand  it  in  lesser  matters.  Without  a  sigh  they  dispensed 
with  that  which  everyone  knew  to  be  incapable  of  actual  enact-  / 
ment  before  their  eyes.  Furthermore,  in  the  absence  of  a  drop 
curtain  (see  pp.  243  f.,  below)  it  would  have  been  necessary  for 
characters  slain  upon  the  stage  either  to  rise  and  walk  casually 
off,  as  in  the  Chinese  theaters  of  today,  or  to  be  carried  off.  The 
first  alternative  is  unthinkable  in  ancient  Greece  and  the  second 
would  have  been  too  monotonous. 


130  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

It  has  also  been  claimed^  that  the  use  of  masks,  each  with  its 
own  unchanging  features,  would  have  been  an  insuperable 
obstacle  to  scenes  of  violence,  as  normally  presupposing  great 
and  rapid  changes  in  the  facial  expressions  of  the  characters. 
But  in  connection  with  other  scenes  the  Greeks  frequently  ignored 
and  frequently  evaded  the  difficulties  caused  by  the  immobility 
of  their  masks  (see  pp.  222  f,,  below);  so  there  is  no  reason  to 
believe  that  the  use  of  masks  would  by  itself  have  driven  inci- 
dents of  this  nature  from  the  Greek  stage. 

Ludovico  Castelvetro  (1570)  alleged  that  the  high  and  narrow 
stage  of  the  Greek  theater  was  too  cramped  for  the  dignified 
representation  of  violence.  Whatever  plausibility  this  sugges- 
tion may  previously  have  enjoyed  has  beerulost  since  Dorpfeld 
has  shown  that  the  fifth-century  theater  at  Athens  had  no  raised 
platform  for  the  exclusive  use  of  actors  and  that  actors  and 
chorus  stood  alike  in  the  broad  expanse  of  the  orchestra  (see 
pp.  79  and  117,  above)  (Figs.  22  f.). 

It  is  customary  to  explain  the  Greek  avoidance  of  violence 
upon  aesthetic  grounds;  to  assert  that  the  susceptibilities  of  the 
Greeks  were  so  refined  as  to  have  been  offended  by  scenes  of 
bloodshed.  That  which  would  be  disagreeable  or  painful  to  see 
in  real  Hfe  should  never  be  presented  to  an  audience.  This  is  the 
French  position.  In  the  first  place  the  French  took  over  the 
Greek  practice  on  faith.  It  was  only  when  they  were  called  upon 
to  explain  it  that  they  proceeded  to  evolve  this  justification. 
Then  the  logic  of  their  argument  carried  them  beyond  their 
models.  "A  character  in  < French >  tragedy  could  be  per- 
mitted to  kill  himself,  whether  he  did  it  by  poison  or  steel: 
what  he  was  not  suffered  to  do  was  to  kill  someone  else.  And 
while  nothing  was  to  be  shown  on  the  stage  which  could  offend 
the  feelings  through  the  medium  of  the  eyes,  equally  was  nothing 
to  he  narrated  with  the  accompaniment  of  any  adjuncts  that  could 
possibly  arouse  disagreeable  sensations  in  the  mind."^    They  were 

'  Cf.  Freytag  s  Technique  of  the  Drama^,  translated  by  MacEwan,  p.  75,  and 
Hense,  Die  Modificining  der  Maske  in  der  griechischen  Tragodi^  (1905),  pp.  2  f. 
'  Cf.  hounsbury,  Shakespeare  as  a  Dramatic  Artist  (1902),  p.  175  (italics  mine). 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  RELIGIOUS  ORIGIN  131 

therefore  under  the  necessity  of  attempting  to  paint  the  lily — 
**  they  took  exception  to  the  way  in  which  Philoctetes  speaks  of 
the  plasters  and  rags  which  he  applied  to  his  sores ;  and  equally 
so  to  the  description  which  Tiresias  gives  in  the  Antigone  of  the 
filth  of  the  ill-omened  birds  which  had  fed  on  the  carcass  of 
Polynices."'  I  would  not  be  understood  as  altogether  rejecting  u^ 
this  aesthetic  explanation;  doubtless  the  practice  of  the  Greek 
playwrights  created,  if  it  did  not  find  ready  made,  such  taste 
concerning  these  matters.  It  certainly  applies  to  cases  of 
bhnding,  which,  whether  self-imposed  (Sophocles'  ^ledvpus  the 
King)  or  wrought  by  others  (Euripides'  Hecabe),  always  take 
place  off-scene — the  later  sight  of  the  bloody  masks  and  ghastly 
eyes  is  harrowing  enough  and  to  spare.  Nevertheless,  however 
strong  a  case  may  be  made  out  for  it,  the  aesthetic  interpreta- 
tion cannot,  because  of  one  cogent  objection,  provide  the  real, 
ultimate  reason  for  the  convention.  Is  suicide  so  much  less 
revolting  than  homicide  that  the  same  taste  can  consistently  " 
shrink  from  the  sight  of  one  but  tolerate  the  other  ? 

The  same  objection  Hes  against  another  suggestion,  viz., 
that  the  theater  precinct  was  sacred  ground  which  would  be 
polluted  by  murder^^^ough  done  in  mimicry.  To  those  who 
remember  the  taint  which  the  Greeks  thought  to  be  brought  upon 
a  land  by  manslaughter,  this  theory  will  not,  at  first,  seem  lack- 
ing in  plausibility.  But  unfortunately,  accidental  homicide  and  ;:3^ 
suicide  were  thought  to  involve  pollution  no  less  than  did  murder. 
Even  a  natural  death,  in  the  Greeks'  opinion,  brought  a  taint. 
Consequently,  this  suggestion  fails  to  explain  how  suicides  and 
natural  deaths  could  occur  on  the  Greek  stage. 

My  own  interpretation  of  the  phenomena  under  consideration 
is  somewhat  similar  to  that  just  mentioned.  Not  only  was  the 
theater  sacred  ground  but  all  who  were  connected  with  the 
dramatic  performances — those  who  bore  the  expenses  (the 
choregi;  see  p.  270,  below),  poets,  actors,  and  chorus — "were 
looked  upon  as  ministers  of  religion,  and  their  persons  were 

'  Cf.  ibid.,  p.  204.  The  passages  referred  to  are  Sophocles'  Philoctetes,  vss. 
38  f.,  649  f.,  and  696-99,  and  Antigone,  vss.  1016-22  and  1080-83.  The  expressions 
employed  in  the  Greek  could  be  seriously  objected  to  only  by  the  most  fastidious. 


132  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

sacred  and  inviolable."^  Even  the  audience  shared  in  this 
immunity.  Any  outrage  at  such  a  time  and  in  such  a  place  was 
not  viewed  in  its  usual  light  but  was  visited  with  severe  penalties 
as  an  act  of  desecration.  Thus,  when  Demosthenes  acted  as 
choregus  for  a  dithyrambic  chorus  in  350  B.C.  and  was  assaulted 
by  Midias,  he  wished  the  latter  to  be  punished,  not  merely  for 
assault  (v(3pLs)  but  for  sacrilege  (ctcrejSeta)  .^  In  the  speech  which 
he  prepared  for  this  suit  Demosthenes  cited  some  of  the  prece- 
dents (§§  178-80).  He  reminded  his  auditors  how  Ctesicles  had 
been  put  to  death  for  striking  a  personal  enemy  with  a  whip 
during  the  procession  and  how  in  363  B.C.  the  archon's  own  father 
had  only  by  a  natural  death  avoided  punishment  for  having 
violently  ejected  a  spectator  from  a  seat  which  he  had  unwarrant- 
ably occupied.  In  like  manner  the  person  of  an  actor  was  for 
the  time  being  sacrosanct.  Of  course,  the  Greeks  were  not  fools ; 
they  knew  that  a  single  blow  in  genuine  anger  was  a  greater 
outrage  than  murder  itself  in  make-believe.  Convention  allowed 
the  audience  to  express  their  disapproval  of  actors  or  of  their 
performances  by  pelting  them  with  figs,  olives,  or  even  stones. 
Custom  had  dulled  their  sanctity  to  this  extent.  Nevertheless, 
the  taboo  which  had  been  derived  from  ancient  ritual  prevented 
one  actor  from  murdering  another  upon  the  stage.  But  this 
taboo  did  not  protect  an  actor  against  himself  or  against  the 
assaults  of  nature  or  of  the  gods.  Hence  suicides  and  natural 
deaths  were  permissible  within  the  audience's  sight,  though 
homicides  were  not.  ;,o  rd    V 

In  comedy  the  influences  which  tended  to  prevent  the  enact- 
ing of  scenes  of  violence  were  partly  nullified  by  the  fact  that  one 
of  the  purposes  of  the  comus  and  other  fertiUty  rites  had  been 
the  expulsion  of  malign  powers  by  violence,  not  only  of  language 
but  also  of  conduct  (see  p.  37,  above).  Of  course  the  comic 
playwrights  rarely  had  occasion  to  treat  of  death  or  murder. 
But  scenes  of  physical  violence  and  horseplay,  such  as  the  lashes 
administered  to  Xanthias  and  Dionysus  (at  his  own  festival !)  in 
Aristophanes'  Frogs,  vss.  644  ff.,  are  common. 

^  Cf.  Haigh,  The  Attic  Theatre^,  p.  2. 

'  Cf.  argument,  Demosthenes'  Against  Midias  §§  2  f. 


That  most  wonderful  of  Greek  dra- 
matic instruments,  the  chorus. — Gilbert 
Murray. 

A  really  great  artist  can  always  trans- 
form the  limitations  of  his  art  into  valu- 
able qualities. — Oscar  Wilde. 

CHAPTER  n 
THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CHORAL  ORIGIN^ 

Tragedy  and  satyric  drama  were  derived  from  the  dithyramb ; , 
comedy  from  the  comus  (see  pp.  6,  23  f.,  36,  and  43  f.,  above). 
Now  both  the  dithyramb  and  the  comus  were  entirely  choral. 
Consequently  early  tragedy  and  comedy  were  also  choral.  No 
other  fact  in  the  history  of  Greek  drama  is  better  authenticated, 
both  by  Hterary  tradition  and  the  extant  plays,  than  this.^  The 
dithyrambic  chorus  consisted  of  fifty  dancers,  and  this  seems  to 
have  been  the  size  of  the  chorus  also  in  early  tragedy.  So  the 
chorus  in  Aeschylus'  Suppliants  (between  500  and  490  B.C.) 
was  made  up  of  the  fifty  daughters  of  Danaus.  Whether  this 
^.^<,  ^4r•,^^ ^1^^—,  -',^^o^x  practice  or  a  reversion,  on  this  occasion,  to 
ance  of  such  cOiu^^  cannot  now  be  determined.  At  least  by 
487  B.C.  the  ticvgic  chorus  had  been  reduced  to  twelve.  It  is 
supposed  that  this  came  about  as  follows:  During  the  fifth 
century  each  tragic  poet  was  required  to  present  four  plays  at  a 
time  in  the  annual  competition  at  the  City  Dionysia,  three 
tragedies  and  one  satyric  drama.  This  grouping  of  plays  cannot 
be  proven  for  any  poet  before  Aeschylus  (525-456  B.C.)  and 
probably  was  introduced  at  a  rearrangement  of  the  festival 
program  which  took  place  about  501  B.C.     The  members  of  the 

'  In  addition  to  the  works  mentioned  on  pp.  xvii  and  xx  f .,  above,  cf.  Decharme, 
Euripides  and  the  Spirit  of  His  Dramas  (1892),  translated  by  Loeb  (1906);  Capps, 
"The  Chorus  in  the  Later  Greek  Drama,"  American  Journal  of  Archaeology,  X 
(1895),  287  ff.;  Helmreich,  Der  Chor  bei  Sophokles  mid  Euripides  (1905);  A.  Korte, 
"Das  Fortleben  des  Chors  im  gr.  Drama,"  N.Jahrb.f.  d.  kl.  Altertum,  V  (1900), 
81  ff.;  Flickinger,  "XOPOT  in  Terence's  Heauton,  The  Shifting  of  Choral  Roles 
in  Menander,  and  Agathon's  'EMBOAIMA,"  Classical  Philology,  VII  (191 2), 
24  ff.;  Stephenson,  Some  Aspects  of  the  Dramatic  Art  of  Aeschylus  (1913);  Fries, 
De  Conexu  Chori  Personae  cum  Fabulae  Actione  (1913);  Duckett,  Studies  in  Ennius 
(1915);  and  Helmreich,  Ber  Chor  im  Drama  des  Aschylus  (1915). 

^  Nevertheless,  it  has  been  ignored  by  certain  recent  writers  on  the  origin  of 
tragedy,  cf.  Classical  Philology,  VIII  (1913),  283. 

133 


J 


134  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

chorus  (the  choreutae)  must  have  found  it  irksome  to  memorize 
the  words,  music,  dance  steps,  and  stage  business  for  so  many- 
plays.  To  relieve  this  burden  Aeschylus  or  a  contemporary- 
divided  the  choreutae  at  his  disposal  into  four  groups  of  twelve 
each,  assigning  one  group  as  a  chorus  for  each  of  his  four  plays. 
Whether  the  dramatist  continued  to  be  provided  with  forty- 
eight  or  fifty  choreutae  or  whether,  as  the  role  of  the  chorus  lost 
its  bulk  and  importance,  a  single  group  of  twelve  choreutae 
appeared  in  all  four  pieces  is  unknown.  In  the  former  case,  the 
three  groups  of  choreutae  that  would  normally  be  idle  during  any 
one  play  could  be  conveniently  employed  as  a  supplementary 
chorus,  mute  attendants,  etc.  But  however  this  may  be,  twelve  r^ 
was  the  size  of  the  chorus  in  the  three  extant  tragedies  of  Aeschy- 
lus which  followed  the  Suppliants;  and  it  continued  to  be  such 
until  the  middle  of  the  fifth  century,  when  Sophocles  raised  the 
number  to  fifteen.^  This  innovation  enabled  the  chorus  to  enter 
the  orchestra  in  three  files  of  five  men  each  and  to  retain  this 
formation  for  their  dance  movements.  This  ga-ctors  or  ot  then 
than  to  draw  them  up,  as  was  previously  necesi»  or  evf  \}  -'xJlIlSs 
of  six  men  each  or  three  files  of  four  each.  Furthermore,  the 
chorus  leader  (the  coryphaeus)  could  now  stand  to  one  side 
occasionally  without  spoiling  the  symmetry  of  the  two  half- 
choruses,  each  of  which  had  a  sub-leader  of  its  own.  Aeschylus 
probably  adopted  Sophocles'  innovation  in  the  three  plays  which 
he  brought  out  in  458  B.C.  One  of  the  test  passages  is  Agamem- 
non, vss.  1344-71,  where  a  single  tetrameter  line  seems  to  be 
assigned  to  each  of  three  choreutae  and  an  iambic  couplet  to  each 
of  the  remaining  twelve.  There  is'  no  reason  to  believe  that  the 
number  was  altered  again  for  a  long  time;  but  further  informa- 
tion of  a  change  is  lacking  until  Roman  times — at  Cyrene  a  wall- 
painting  of  a  tragic  chorus  represents  but  seven  choreutae. 

It  is  unlikely  that  the  chorus  in  the  early  comus  consisted  of  V 
any  fixed  number.  Toward  the  end  of  the  fifth  century  theV 
comic  chorus  contained  twenty-four  choreutae.     Probably  this 

'  Whether  the  satyric  chorus  was  increased  at  the  same  time  is  unknown.  In 
Fig.  4,  which  represents  a  satyric  drama  of  about  400  B.C.,  not  more  than  twelve 
choreutae  are  represented. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CHORAL  ORIGIN  13S 

number  was  chosen  at  the  time  that  comedy  was  granted  the 
oflBicial  recognition  of  the  state,  486  B.C.  If  such  was  the  case 
the  comic  chorus  was  just  twice  as  large  as  the  tragic  chorus 
of  that  period.  The  reason  for  doubhng  the  number  is  found  in 
the  hostihty  which  frequently  rent  the  chorus  of  ancient  comedy 
and  in  the  paralleKsm  which  is  an  outstanding  feature  of  its 
choral  odes  (cf.  p.  42,  above).  About  the  close  of  the  fourth 
century,  when  the  functions  of  the  comic  chorus  had  been  greatly 
curtailed,  it  is  likely  that  its  size  was  also  reduced.  At  any  rate, 
the  chorus  at  the  Soteric  festival  at  Delphi  from  272  to  269  B.C. 
contained  but  seven  or  eight  choreutae  and  at  Delos  in  the  next 
century  only  four. 

The  chorus  of  Greek  comedy  was  Protean  in  the  forms  that 
it  assumed.  In  accordance  with  the  animal  disguises  which  were 
so  popular  in  the  early  comus  (see  p.  54,  above),  we  hear  of 
choruses  representing  wasps,  birds,  frogs,  goats,  snakes,  bees,  gaU- 
insects,  fishes,  ants,  storks,  etc.  A  suggestion  as  to  the  appear- 
ance of  such  choruses  is  afforded  by  five  Attic  vase  paintings  of 
ca.  540-490  B.C.  (Figs.  12-16).  Still  more  fantastic  were  choruses 
of  clouds,  dreams,  cities,  seasons,  islands,  laws,  ships,  sirens, 
centaurs,  sphinxes,  dramas,  etc.  Less  grotesque  would  be 
choruses  of  Persians,  knights,  graces,  athletes,  poets,  etc.  These 
lists  convey  but  a  sHght  hint  of  the  diversity  which  the  fancy  of 
the  poets  provided  for  the  choruses  of  Old  and  Middle  Comedy. 
The  choreutae,  of  course,  were  always  men,  but  some  or  all  of 
them  might  be  dressed  to  represent  women.  Thus,  the  clouds 
in  Aristophanes'  play  are  thought  of  as  women,  and  in  his  Frogs 
the  chorus  of  initiates  comprises  both  men  and  women.  At  the 
beginning  of  Aristophanes'  Women  in  Council  the  choreutae  are" 
men  dressed  to  represent  women  wh6  have  tried  to  disguise 
themselves  as  men !  By  the  time  of  New  Comedy  the  chorus  ha(ij 
sunk  to  a  position  of  comparative  insignificance  and  had  become 
more  conventional,  usually  consisting  of  men  engaged  in  a 
carousal  (kojjuos).  In  the  earliest  form  of  Attic  tragedy  the 
chorus  was  invariably  composed  of  sileni.^    But  when  its  themes 

'  For  the  differences  between  sileni  and  satyrs  and  for  their  appearance  on  the 
stage,  see  pp.  24-32. 


136  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

were  no  longer  exclusively  Dionysiac  (see  p.  123,  above),  the 
choruses  became  more  sedate,  generally  consisting  simply  of 
men  or  women.  In  most  cases  these  are  citizens  of  the  imagined 
scene  of  action.  In  addition  to  sex  it  was  customary  to  indicate 
whether  they  were  thought  of  as  being  young  or  old.  Sometimes 
they  are  characterized  as  foreigners.  For  example,  the  scene 
of  Euripides'  Phoenician  Maids  is  laid  in  Thebes;  but  dress, 
accent,  and  the  habit  of  oriental  prostration  mark  the  women 
in  the  chorus  as  non-Hellenic.  The  staid  character  of  tragic 
choruses  is  abandoned  in  the  unique  furies  of  Aeschylus'  Eumen- 
ides.  According  to  tradition  their  black  garments,  bloody  faces, 
and  snaky  locks  produced  so  frightful  an  impression  that  boys 
fainted  and  women  miscarried.  In  satyric  drama  the  chorus 
always  consisted  of  satyrs  (see  pp.  125  f.,  above). 

One  of  the  first  problems  that  confronted  the  Greek  dramatist 
was  the  choice  of  such  a  character^foX-his- chorus  as  would  make 
it  an  integral  part  of  the  play's  action.  The  never-changing 
character  of  the  chorus  in  the  satyr-plays  prevented,  for  the  most 
part,  anything  but  the  loosest  of  connections  between  chorus 
and  actors  there,  as  we  have  already  noted  (pp.  126  f.,  above). 
In  tragedy  the  task  was  somewhat  easier,  yet  still  most  difficult. 
In  the  earHest  Greek  tragedy  extant,  Aeschylus'  Suppliants, 
the  chorus,  the  fifty  daughters  of  Danaus  who  have  fled  from 
Egypt  to  Argos  in  order  to  escape  marriage  with  their  fifty 
cousins,  are  themselves  the  story.  The  actors  are  of  secondary 
importance.  From  the  standpoint  of  dramatic  interest  Danaus 
himself,  the  king  of  Argos,  and  the  suitors'  herald  do  not  compare 
with  the  girls  themselves.  In  the  Persians  and  the  Seven  against 
Thebes,  Aeschylus  has  been  nearly  as  successful.  In  these  plays 
the  fate  of  the  chorus,  though  not  the  prime  object  of  interest,  is 
almost  inextricably  bound  up  with  that  of  the  other  dramatic 
characters.  In  the  former  the  Persian  elders,  for  patriotic  as 
well  as  personal  motives,  are  no  less  concerned  than  the  queen 
mother  (Atossa)  or  King  Xerxes  himself  in  the  fate  of  the  army 
invading  Greece.  Similarly,  in  the  Seven  against  Thebes  the 
possibility  of  the  city's  being  captured  has  as  vital  a  meaning 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CHORAL  ORIGIN  137 

to  the  chorus  of  Theban  girls  as  to  the  others,  and  frightens  them 
more.  Here  we  find  a  new  note;  for  whereas  in  the  first  part 
of  the  play  the  thought  ofVhe  danger  threatening  thenjselves  and 
the  city  swallows  up  all  else,  in  the  last  part  their  hearts  are  torn 
with  fear  for  Eteocles  as  he  fares  forth  to  single  combat  with  his 
brother.  This  latter  motivation,  viz.,  that  the  chorus  should 
be  moved  by  a  more  or  less  sentimental  interest  in  some  actor 
rather  than  by  a  vital  fear  for  itself,  or  for  others  and  itself,  was 
destined  to  play  a  prominent  part  in  the  history  of  the  dramatic 
chorus.  It  recurs  in  Aeschylus'  Prometheus  Bound,  Agamemnon, 
and  Libation-Bearers  (not  to  mention  the  plays  of  Sophocles  and 
Euripides),  in  all  of  which  the  interest  of  the  chorus  in  the 
action  is  more  or  less  adventitious.  Even  in  such  cases,  how- 
ever, it  was  the  practice  of  Greek  playwrights,  if  possible,  to 
bind  the  chorus  more  intimately  to  the  hero  in  the  final  catas- 
trophe. Thus,  in  Prometheus  Bound  the  daughters  of  Oceanus, 
who  constitute  the  chorus,  bear  no  real  relationship  to  the  leading 
character;  nevertheless,  at  the  close  (vs.  1067)  they  declare  their 
wish  to  share  his  fate,  mount  the  crag  where  he  is  fastened,  and 
with  him  are  hurled  to  Tartarus.  A  final  refinement  is  found  in 
Aeschylus'  Eumenides.  Here  the  chorus  of  furies,  so  far  from 
fearing  for  or  sympathizing  with  one  of  the  characters,  is  set  in 
deadly  opposition  to  Orestes  and  is  bent  upon  tracking  the 
guilty  man  down.  Inasmuch  as  this  was  the  especial  duty  of 
,  furies  the  chorus  is  raised  once  more  to  a  point  of  primary  impor- 
tance. Thus  it  appears  that  from  the  standpoint  of  choral 
technique  Aeschylus'  earliest  play,  the  Suppliants,  and  his  last 
play,  the  Eumenides,  are  the  most  successful. 

In  general,  the  chorus  in  Sophocles  and  Euripides  is  less, 
intimately  related  to  the  plot  than  in  Aeschylus.  Yet  there  are 
notable  exceptions  to  this  statement.  Thus,  the  chorus  of 
Euripides'  Suppliants  consists  of  Argive  women  together  with 
their  >  andmaids — the  mothers  of  the  seven  chieftains  who  fell 
in  the  attack  upon  Thebes.  They  implore  the  aid  of  Theseus 
to  force  the  Thebans  to  surrender  the  bodies  of  their  sons  for 
burial.    According  to  ancient  thought  this  was  a  matter  of 


138  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

paramount  importance  and  the  whole  play  is  occupied  with  it. 
The  mothers  are  in  fact  the  chief  personages  of  the  drama;  the 
other  characters  speak  and  act  only  in  their  behalf.  Not  even- 
the  Danaids  of  Aeschylus'  Suppliants  are  more  indispensable  to 
the  mechanism  of  the  piece.  On  the  other  hand,  the  connection 
between  chorus  and  plot  in  Euripides'  Phoenician  Maids  is  of 
the  flimsiest.  This  tragedy  deals  with  the  same  subject  as 
Aeschylus'  Seven  against  Thebes.  But  the  Aeschylean  chorus 
consists,  as  we  have  observed,  of  Theban  girls  who  are  vitally 
concerned  in  the  outcome  of  the  battle.  Euripides'  chorus  is 
made  up  of  Tyrian  virgins  on  their  way  to  Delphi.  They  have 
no  personal  interest  in  the  possible  capture  of  Thebes  or  in  the 
fratricidal  strife  of  Eteocles  and  Polynices. 

The  same  sort  of  thing  occurs  also  in  Old  Comedy.  Dr.  Fries 
{op.  cit.,  p.  35)  correctly  points  out  that  the  knights  in  Aris- 
tophanes' play  of  that  name  are  present  rather  to  listen  than  to 
act.  In  Aristophanes'  Clouds  and  Frogs  the  connection  between 
chorus  and  action  is  of  the  slightest  and  entirely  artificial.  In 
general  it  can  be  said  that  the  character  of  comic  choruses  is 
chosen  rather  to  fit  into  some  fantastic  situation,  and  may  be 
largely  ignored  toward  the  end  of  the  play.  Thus,  in  Aristoph- 
anes' Women  at  the  Thesmophoria  the  women  of  Athens  assemble 
to  contrive  a  punishment  for  Euripides,  who  has  been  mahgning 
their  sex.  Euripides'  father-in-law,  made  up  as  a  woman,  tries 
to  defend  him  but  is  detected.  During  vss.  871-1160  Euripides 
under  various  disguises  attempts  to  rescue  his  relative,  but  each 
time  is  frustrated.  But  the  chorus  of  Euripides-haters  assist 
in  balking  him  neither  by  word  nor  deed.  Their  original  char- 
acter, if  retained  throughout  these  lines,  would  have  too  eff(ictu- 
ally  thwarted  the  humor  of  his  stratagems. 

It  is  possible,  however,  to  detect  more  subtle  effects  in  the 
relations  between  chorus  and  actors.  Since  the  chorus  is  usually 
friendly  to  the  principal  character,  the  bond  of  symp.  thy  is 
j  often  strengthened  by  having  the  chorus  of  the  same  sex  and 
of  about  the  same  age  as  that  character.  So,  in  Aeschyivis' 
Libation-Bearers  the  choreutae  are  Trojan  slave  women  who  arc 


I 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CHORAL  ORIGIN  139 

cognizant  of  conditions  in  the  palace  and  fully  share  Electra's 
eagerness  to  avenge  her  father's  murder.  In  Sophocles'  Maidens 
*  of  Trachis  the  chorus  of  girls  is  in  thorough  accord  with  the  gentle, 
unsophisticated  Deianira.  Furthermore,  men  or  older  women 
might  have  warned  ber  against  sending  to  her  husband  a  robe 
dipped  in  the  centaur's  blood,  an  act  which  is  so  essential  to  the 
plot;  but  such  innocence  is  made  to  seem  entirely  plausible  by 
reason  of  the  youth  and  inexperience  of  the  chorus.  On  the 
contrary,  sometimes  the  run  of  the  plot  requires  an  effect 
precisely  the  opposite.  In  Sophocles'  Antigone,  for  example,  the 
isolation  of  the  heroine  is  intensified  by  a  chorus,  not  only  of' 
men  but  of  old  men,  who  would  be  least  sympathetic  with  her 
violation  of  a  public  edict.  In  Aeschylus'  Prometheus  Bound  the 
defiant  Titan  would  have  scorned  the  overtures  of  a  group  of  men, 
whoever  they  might  be,  but  the  feminine  tact  and  sympathy  of 
the  Oceanides  reach  his  heart  at  once.  Such  a  chorus,  moreover, 
is  an  effective  foil  the  better  to  emphasize  the  hero's  indomitable 
strength  and  will-power.  In  Aeschylus'  Persians  the  chorus  of 
Persian  elders  is  not  only  natural  in  itself,  but  such  experienced 
men's  fear  for  the  army  and  their  grief  at  its  misfortunes  produce 
an  impression  of  utter  collapse  beyond  the  power  of  any  chorus 
of  women  to  effect.  In  Aristophanes'  Knights  the  chorus,  in 
spite  of  criticisms,  was  appropriately  constituted,  since  it  repre- 
sented a  body  of  men  who  are  said  to  have  entertained  a  special 
grudge  against  Cleon.  It  would  be  easy  to  extend  this  topic 
to  a  great  length.  Suffice  it  to  state  that  both  the  extant  plays 
and  the  ancient  commentaries  upon  them^  prove  that  the  Greek 
poets  expended  no  little  thought  upon  this  detail  of  their 
dramaturgy. 

Having  once  selected  his  chorus,  the  necessity  rested  upon 
the  poet  of  composing  choral  odes  appropriate  to  the  character 
chosen.     In  this  they  were  not  always  successful.     In  Euripides' 
Electra  the  chorus  consists  of  virgins  from  the  Argive  countryside,  j 
At  vss.  434-78  they  give  an  elaborate  description  of  Achilles'/ 

»  Cf.  the  scholia  to  Sophocles'  Ajax,  vs.  134,  to  Euripides'  Phoenician  Maids, 
vs.  202,  etc. 


I40  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

armor.  Such  women  would  have  had  no  opportunity  of  seeing 
Achilles  at  Troy  themselves,  and  hearsay  would  scarcely  have 
been  so  circumstantial.  Again,  in  Euripides'  Phoenician  Maids, 
vss.  638-75,  801-27,  and  1019-67,  the  Tyrian  girls  unroll  the 
scroll  of  Theban  history  like  antiquarians.  Their  knowledge 
is  not  justified  by  the  fact  that  Thebes  had  been  founded,  some 
five  generations  before,  by  a  Phoenician  prince.  Again,  in 
Euripides'  Hippolytus,  vss.  1 102-19,  women  of  Troezen,  the 
intimates  of  a  local  washerwoman  (!),  discourse  upon  the  conflict 
between  faith  and  reaHty !  Still  again,  in  Euripides'  Iphigenia  at 
Aulis,  vss.  794-800,  a  band  of  unassuming  women  from  Chalcis 
throw  doubt  upon  the  mythological  tradition  that  Zeus  had 
appeared  unto  Leda  in  the  form  of  a  swan.  The  first  two 
examples  are  somewhat  different  from  the  last  two.  The  former 
arise  simply  from  failure  to  find  a  satisfactory  solution  for  the 
problem  under  consideration.  But  the  latter  reveal  the  poet 
dropping  his  mask  and  using  the  chorus  as  a  mouthpiece  for  his 
own  philosophizing  and  skepticism. 

Lest  anyone  suppose  that  I  exaggerate  the  difficulty  or 
attribute  to  Greek  playwrights  a  perplexity  which  they  did  not 
experience,  let  me  point  out  the  confessed  failure  of  a  modern 
poet.  Concerning  the  close  of  Act  III  in  the  second  part  of 
Faust,  Goethe  said:  "You  have  observed  the  character  of  the 
chorus  is  quite  destroyed  by  the  mourning  song :  until  this  time 
it  has  remained  thoroughly  antique,  or  has  never  belied  its  girlish 
nature;  but  here  of  a  sudden  it  becomes  nobly  reflecting,  and 
says  things  such  as  it  has  never  thought  or  could  think."  And 
to  this  Eckermann,  uncontradicted,  repHed:  "These  httle 
inconsistencies  are  of  no  consequence,  if  by  their  means  a  higher 
degree  of  beauty  is  obtained.  The  song  had  to  be  sung,  somehow 
or  other;  and  as  there  was  no  other  chorus  present,  the  girls 
were  forced  to  sing  it."^  ;^That  Euripides  was  equally  conscious 
of  what  he  was  doing  is  proven  by  the  fact  that  in  some  cases  he 
makes  only  too  patent  an  attempt  to  gloss  over  the  difficulty. 
Thus,  he  makes  the  chorus  in  the  Electra  explain  that  they  had 

*  Conversations  with  Eckermann,  July  5,  1827  (Oxenford's  translation). 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CHORAL  ORIGIN  141 

heard  of  Achilles'  shield  in  the  nearby  harbor  of  Naupha  "from 
one  who  had  fared  from  Troy"  (vss.  452-55);  and  the  Tyrian 
maidens  justify  their  knowledge  of  Theban  history  by  saying  that 
they  "had  received  an  account  at  home  in  an  alien  tongue" 
{Phoenician  Maids,  vs.  819).  A  curious  self-consciousness  seems 
to  obsess  dramatic  poets  and  force  them  to  call  to  the  hearer's 
attention  the  very  difficulty  that  they  are  striving  to  avoid. 
Like  some  scientists  who  think  they  have  explained  a  phenom- 
enon if  they  have  provided  a  name  for  it,  playwrights  sometimes 
act  as  if  they  had  justified  an  incongruity  if  they  mention  it.  An 
excellent  modern  illustration  of  this  occurs  in  Twelfth  Night,  II,  5. 
In  order  to  extract  the  full  humor  from  the  scene  it  is  necessary 
that  Malvolio  read  aloud  the  forged  letter  which  he  has  just 
found.  Therefore,  Shakespeare  makes  Sir  Toby  say :  "  The  spirit 
of  humours  intimate  reading  aloud  to  him! "  Since  these  words 
are  uttered  in  an  aside,  they  can  have  no  real  effect.  Neverthe- 
less, the  dramatist  eased  his  conscience  by  inserting  them. 

Sometimes  the  difficulty  of  finding  motifs  suitable  for  the 
role  of  the  chorus  caused  the  playwrights  to  introduce  a  second 
chorus  of  a  different  type.  Phrynichus  seems  to  have  done  this 
in  476  B.C.,  bringing  on  a  chorus  of  elders  as  well  as  one  of 
Phoenician  women.^  Likewise,  in  Euripides'  Hippolytus  that 
hero's  comrades  in  the  chase  appear  and  sing  a  short  ode  (vss. 
61-72)  before  the  arrival  of  the  regular  chorus.  Several  other 
instances  are  known  of  in  Euripides'  lost  plays.  In  Seneca's 
Agamemnon  there  is  a  chorus  of  Mycenaean  women  and  another 
of  Trojan  captives.  In  the  same  writer's  Hercules  on  Mt.  Oeta, 
Dr.  Fries  (op.  cit.,  p.  49)  maintains  that  three  choruses  are 
introduced,  one  of  Oechalian  captives  at  vs.  104,  another  of 
Deianira's  companions  at  vs.  583,  and  a  third  of  Hercules' 
comrades  at  vs.  103 1.  The  same  sort  of  thing  occurs  also  in 
comedy.  Thus,  from  Terence's  Self -Tormentor,  which  is  a  Latin 
translation  of  Menander's  play  of  the  same  name,  it  would 
appear  that  in  the  Greek  original  a  chorus  of  banqueting  com- 
panions performed  at  vs.  171  and  another  chorus  of  maidservants 

'  Cf.  Graeber,  De  Poetarum  Atticorum  Arte  Scaenica  (1911),  pp.  56  ff. 


142  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

at  vss.  409  and  748.'  Occasionally,  before  making  its  appear- 
ance, the  chorus  sings,  from  behind  the  scenes,  in  a  different 
character  from  that  which  it  later  assumes.  Aristophanes' 
Frogs,  for  example,  derives  its  name  from  a  chorus  which  never 
is  seen.  At  vs.  209  the  chorus,  from  behind  the  scenes,  deHvers 
a  batrachian  strain  as  an  accompaniment  to  Dionysus  and 
Charon  when  they  row  across  the  subterranean  lake  (see  p.  90, 
above).  It  is  not  until  after  vs.  315  that  this  chorus  actually 
appears  and  reveals  its  true  character,  that  of  men  and  women 
who  had,  when  on  earth,  been  initiated  into  the  mysteries.  This 
method  of  procedure  gained  one  of  two  results — it  obviated  the 
necessity  either  of  a  lightning  change  of  costume  on  the  part  of 
the  chorus  or  that  of  hiring  extra  choreutae.  As  to  the  latter 
alternative,  whatever  may  have  been  true  of  the  tragic  poets 
(see  p.  134,  above),  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  comic 
poets  always  had  spare  choreutae  at  their  disposal. 
>^  But  not  only  should  choral  odes  be  appropriate  to  the  dra- 
matic character  of  the  chorus;  they  ought  also  to  .be  closely 
connected  with  the  theme  of  the  play.  And  this  requirement  is 
no  less  difficult  than  the  other.  The  ode  on  the  inventive  spirit 
of  man  in  Sophocles'  Antigone,  vss.  334-75,  is  so  vague  that  an 
audience  might  well  be  in  doubt  as  to  which  one  of  the  dramatic 
characters  it  was  intended  for.  Verses  11 15-52  in  the  same 
play,  a  hymn  to  Dionysus,  is  quite  irrelevant,  except  in  so  far 
as  that  divinity  was  the  patron  of  the  dramatic  festival.  Other 
instances  are  found  in  Euripides.  Verses  1301-68  of  Helen  deal 
with  Demeter's  search  for  her  lost  daughter  and  are  so  alien  to 
the  subject  of  the  tragedy  that  many  have  considered  them  an 
interpolation.  An  adventitious  connection  is  sought,  at  the 
close,  by  the  suggestion  that  Helen's  misfortunes  are  due  to  her 
neglect  of  Demeter's  worship  (vss.  1355-57).  Again,  the  chorus' 
eulogy  of  Apollo  in  Iphigenia  among  the  Taurians,  vss.  1234-83, 
is  so  disconnected  with  the  story  that  Professor  Decharme 
{op.  cit.,  pp.  312  f.)  could  defend  it  only  by  saying:  "If,  there- 
fore, the  chorus  wishes  not  to  rouse  the  suspicion  of  Thoas,  it 

'  Cf.  Flickinger,  op.  cit.,  pp.  28  ff. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CHORAL  ORIGIN  143 

must  speak  of  something  else  than  that  which  really  engrosses  its 
attention.  Hence  the  eulogy  of  Apollo  that  compromises  nobody, 
whose  purport  Thoas  would  not  understand  were  he  to  appear 
suddenly,  but  which  the  spectator  comprehends,  provided  he  re- 
flects." The  description  of  Achilles'  armor  in  Euripides'  Electra, 
vss.  434-78,  has  already  been  mentioned  (pp.  139  f.,  above). 
It  is  as  Httle  connected  with  the  plot  as  it  is  appropriate  to  the 
chorus  of  that  play.  Nevertheless,  Euripides  brought  the  ode 
back  to  the  theme  with  a  jerk  by  saying:  "The  lord  of  such 
warriors  didst  thou  slay,  O  Clytemnestra"  (vss.  479  f.).  There 
are  but  two  things  that  can  be  said  to  palliate  this  offense.  The 
first  is  to  indicate  the  difficulty  of  the  problem;  the  other,  to 
point  out  that  the  ingenuity  of  the  ancient  playwrights  fell  short 
in  only  a  few  plays  and  seldom  more  than  once  in  any  one  piece, 
There  are  certain  ways,  however,  in  which  the  lack  of  anl 
organic  relationship  between  chorus  and  actors  or  the  failure  of' 
the  odes  to  spring  naturally  from  the  dramatic  situation  may  be 
compensated  for  or  glossed  over.  One  is  by  giving  the  choreutae 
an  active  participation  in  the  action.  The  scene  of  Euripides' 
Helen  is  laid  in  Egypt  and  the  chorus  consists  of  Greek  slaves, 
who  assist  the  heroine  in  her  deception  mainly  because  she  is 
a  fellow-Greek  and  her  victim  a  barbarian.  Their  connection, 
therefore,  is  only  moderately  close  and,  as  we  have  seen  (p.  142, 
above) ,  one  of  their  odes  is  by  some  considered  an  interpolation. 
Yet,  apart  from  their  choral  songs,  they  take  an  active  and 
important  part  in  the  play.  It  is  they  who  persuade  Helen  not 
to  believe  Teucer's  announcement  of  her  husband's  death  but  .to 
consult  the  seeress  Theonoe  concerning  the  matter  (vss.  306  and 
317).  Again,  it  is  they  who,  when  the  Egyptian  king  avows  his 
intention  of  murdering  Theonoe  for  abetting  his  decievers,  grasp 
his  garments  and  declare:  "We  are  your  slaves  and  you  can  slay 
us,  but  slay  us  you  must  ere  you  can  kill  Theonoe"  (vss.  1629  ff.). 
1^  Similarly,  in  Euripides'  Orestes  the  chorus  of  Argive  women  is 
(  friendly  toward  Electra  and  her  brother  but  does  not  share  the 
xianger  which  threatens  them.  Yet  when  Helen  is  being  mur- 
dered betind  the  scenes,  at  Electra's  request,  in  order  to  guard 


144  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

against  surprise,  it  divides  into  semi-choruses,  which  picket  the 
two  roads  leading  before  the  palace  (vss.  1251  ff).  A  little  later 
they  attempt  to  make  noise  enough  to  prevent  the  tumult  from 
within  the  palace  attracting  the  notice  of  the  Argive  citizens 
(vss.  1353  f!.) .  Thus,  a  chorus  may  actively  participate  in  a  plot 
to  which  it  is  but  loosely  joined'.  In  fact,  Professor  Capps  has 
boldly  declared :  "  In  every  play  whose  chorus  has  been  criticized 
for  the  irrelevancy  of  its  songs,  whether  the  criticisms  have  been 
just  or  not,  are  found  indications  of  direct  participation  in  the 
action"  {op.  cit.,  p.  295). 

In  this  connection  certain  words  of  Aristotle*  are  usually 
cited:  "The  chorus  ought  to  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  actors; 
it  oughrtoTe  an  integral  part  of  the  whole  and  take  a'sKare  in 
the  acTion,  in  the  manner,  not  of  Euripides  but  of  Sophocles. 
The  choral  songs  of  the  successors  of  Euripides  acidL Sophocles 
have  no  more  to  do  with  the  subject  of  the  piece  than  with  that 
of  some  other  tragedy.  They  are  therefore  sung  as  mere  inter- 
calary numbers  (ejUj^oXtiua) ,  a  practice  first  begun  bj  Agalhon. 
"TTet  this  is  no  more  justifiable  than  to  transfer  a  speech  or  a 
"whole  act  from  one  tragedy  to  another."  Aristotle's  praise  of 
Sophocles  at  the  expense  of  Euripides  probably  refers  to  the 
choice  and  setting  of  Sophoclean  choruses  and  to  the  relevancy  of 
their  songs — ^points  in  which  Sophocles  usually  surpassed  his 
rival.  Aristotle  failed  to  notice  or  did  not  value  the  other 
characteristic  of  Euripidean  choruses,  viz.,  that  they  have  more 
effect  upon  the  plot  and  come  into  more  direct  contact  with  the 
actors,  that  is  to  say,  that  they  really  "act"  more,  than  is  the 
case  in  Sophocles.  In  fact,  it  is  Sophocles'  use  of  the  chorus 
which  is  mainly  responsible  for  the  modern  notion  that  the  Greek 
chorus  was  merely  the  "ideal  spectator."  - 

The  precise  meaning  of  the  latter  part  of  this  passage  from 
the  Poetics  has  not  until  recently  become  clear.  It  is  evident 
that  Aristotle  brings  the  same  charge,  that  of  irrelevancy,  against 
the  choruses  of  both  Euripides  and  Agathon.  But  if  the  differ- 
ence between  them  were  merely  one  of  degree,  he  would  hardly 

'  Cf.  Aristotle's  Poetics,  1456026  ff. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CHORAL  ORIGIN  145 

have  said  that  Agathon  "began"  a  practice  which  he  had  really 
borrowed  from  Euripides  and  only  "developed"  or  "extended." 
Therefore,  Aristotle  must  mean  that  Agathon  was  guilty  of  a 
different  kind  of  irrelevancy  than  Euripides,  and  we  are  now  in  a 
position  to  see  whereof  this  consisted.  Recently  discovered 
fragments  of  Menander  show  that  often  in  New  Comedy  the 
chorus  did  not  appear  in  the  course  of  the  action  at  all,  but  only 
between  acts,  and  that  the  poets  did  not  write  down  the  words  of 
these  entr'actes  but  simply  indicated  where  they  should  come  by 
writing  the  word  XOPOT  ("of  the  chorus")  at  the  places 
required.  To  the  stage  manager  XOPOT  in  the  manuscript 
would  be  simply  a  hint  to  use  anything  he  chose  or  to  refer  to 
the  poet  or  that  he  could  rely  upon  the  latter  to  provide  the 
choreutae  with  a  libretto,  according  to  whatever  arrangement 
they  had  between  them  on  the  subject.  To  the  reader  it  was 
convenient,  as  marking  off  the  divisions  of  the  play.  A  parallel 
to  this  custom  is  found  in  Greene's  James  the  Fourth,  where  at 
the  beginning  of  Act  IV  the  stage  directions  read  "Enter  certain 
huntsmen  (if  you  please,  singing), "  and  again  at  the  close  of  the 
same  act,  "Enter  a  round,  or  some  dance  at  pleasure."  A 
passage  in  the  ancient  Life  of  Aristophanes  had  already  mentioned 
this  practice  of  the  writers  of  New  Comedy  but  had  received 
scant  consideration  until  substantiated  by  the  Menander  frag- 
ments. 

Now,  since  embolimop  means  "something  thrown  in,"  it 
seems  clear  that  the  songs  of  the  chorus  in  the  intermissions 
marked  by  XOPOT  (if  songs  not  recorded  in  the  text  were  sung) 
would  be  embolima  in  Aristotle's  use  of  the  term.  I  believe 
that  this  was  the  innovation  which  Agathon  introduced.  This 
conclusion  will  be  strengthened  if  we  ask  ourselves  what  sort  of 
evidence  enabled  Aristotle  to  attribute  the  invention  of  embolima 
to  Agathon.  It  is  fairly  certain  that  he  never  saw  one  of  Aga- 
thon's  tragedies  actually  performed  in  the  theater.  Then  his 
knowledge  of  Agathon's  dramatic  art  must  have  depended  upon 
the  latter's  pubHshed  works.  Therefore,  if  Agathon's  choral 
numbers  were  notable  rather  for  the  music  than  for  the  libretto, 


146  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

or  consisted  of  music  and  dancing  without  words,  or  were  bor- 
rowed from  other  poets,  or  if  for  any  reason  whatsoever  Agathon 
preferred  not  to  copy  them  down  with  the  rest  of  the  text,  but 
merely  to  mark  their  location  by  XOPOT  or  some  other  symbol, 
then  we  can  understand  how  Aristotle  could  know  that  Agathon 
had  inaugurated  something  new  in  dramatic  technique.  What- 
ever their  defects  of  irrelevancy,  Euripides'  odes  were  not 
"thrown  in"  in  this  sense;  they  were  right  there  in  the  text. 
But  in  Agathon's  manuscripts,  on  the  other  hand,  there  were 
gaps  indicated  between  acts.  In  actual  performance  suitable 
odes  were  ''thrown  in."  A  "thrown-in"  ode  then  would 
be  one  not  appearing  in  the  text.  It  is  self-evident  that  this 
interpretation  throws  a  flood  of  light  upon  Aristotle's  state- 
ments. 

That  XOPOT  was  so  used  in  tragedy  prior  to  the  time  of 
New  Comedy  is  attested  by  its  occurrence  in  a  recent  fragment 
of  a  fourth-century  MedeaJ-  Moreover,  by  inference  its  use 
can  be  safely  traced  still  further  back,  even  close  to  the  period 
of  Agathon.  We  have  seen  that  tragedy  exercised  a  profound 
influence  upon  Old  Comedy  (see  pp.  49  f.,  above) ;  and  Professor 
Navarre^  has  correctly  pointed  out  that  the  influence  of  tragedy 
was  more  quickly  and  strongly  felt  in  the  second  half  of  a  comedy 
(that  after  the  parabasis  or,  when  that  is  lacking,  after  the  agon; 
see  p.  41 5  above).  Accordingly  a  strong  reason  for  believing 
that  this  use  of  XOPOT  originated  in  tragedy  is  found  in  the 
fact  that  XOPOT  occurs  in  this  part  of  Aristophanes'  last  two 
(extant)  comedies;  cf.  Women  in  Cowicil,  vss.  729  and  876 
(393-392  B.C.),  and  Plutus,  vs.  770  (388  B.C.).  It  is  significant 
that  Aristophanes'  use  of  embolima  is  still  embryonic,  has  not 
yet  been  carried  to  the  logical  issue  found  in  New  Comedy. 
That  is  to  say,  the  chorus  of  these  two  plays  still  figures  in  the 
action  and  converses  with  the  actors.  In  the  Women  in  Council 
it  even  has,  in  addition  to  embolima,  several  choral  songs,  the 
words  of  which  are  preserved.     The  fragments  of  the  fourth- 

'  Cf.  PMlologus,  LXX  (1911),  497  f, 

'  Cf.  Revue  des  6,tudes  anciennes,  XIII  (191 1),  273. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CHORAL  ORIGIN  147 

century  Medea,  scanty  as  they  are,  nevertheless  suffice  to  indicate 
that  its  author  employed  embolima  and  the  chorus  in  the  same 
fashion  as  Aristophanes. 

But  by  the  time  of  New  Comedy  a  great  change  had  taken 
place.  In  comedies  of  this  period,  or  at  least  in  many  of  them, 
the  chorus  appeared  only  to  furnish  entertainment  between  acts, 
withdrawing  again  at  the  end  of  its  performance.  It  bore  no 
speaking  part  and  from  the  nature  of  the  case  could  exercise 
no  influence  upon  the  plot.  Occasionally  it  was  brought  into 
formal  relationship  with  one  of  the  actors.  For  example,  in 
Menander's  Girl  with  the  Shorn  Locks  the  chorus  seems  to  consist 
of  Polemon's  boon  companions,  who  took  breakfast  with  him  in 
the  country  and  have  now  come  to  his  house  in  the  city  to  be  on 
hand  for  the  dinner  in  the  evening.  This  is  the  most  frequent 
type  of  chorus  in  New  Comedy.  The  approach  of  these  inter- 
mezzic  choruses  is  often  mentioned  by  the  actors  who  thus 
motivate  their  own  withdrawal  from  the  scene  during  the  choral 
entr^acte.  For  instance,  in  one  case^  XOPOT  is  prefaced  by 
one  character  remarking  to  another:  "Let  us  withdraw  into 
Charisius'  home,  for  a  throng  of  tipsy  youths  is  approaching 
whom  it  is  inadvisable  to  provoke."  Such  an  introduction 
occurs  also  in  a  fragment  of  Alexis,  a  poet  of  Middle  Comedy,^ 
but  the  quotation  is  not  long  enough  to  determine  whether 
Alexis  resembled  Aristophanes  or  the  New  Comedy  in  his  use  of 
embolima  and  of  the  chorus.  Racine's  Athalie,  which  has  been 
pronounced^  the  "one  thoroughly  satisfactory  choric  drama"  that 
modern  art  has  produced,  presents  several  points  of  Hkeness  to 
the  later  Greek  chorus.  The  Levite  maidens  do  not  appear  until 
just  before  the  close  of  the  first  act  and  are  withdrawn  several 
times  subsequently,  being  thus  absent  from  the  scene  during  long 
stretches  of  the  dialogue.  Their  entrances,  also,  are  sometimes 
alluded  to  by  the  actors.  Their  songs,  however,  are  not  em- 
bolima, but  constituent  parts  of  the  text. 

'  In  the  Jernstedt  fragment;  cf.  Capps,  Four  Plays  of  Menander,  pp.  98  f. 
'  Cf.  Kock,  Comicorum  Atticorum  Fragmenta,  II,  ^2>2>  f->  fr.  107. 
3  Cf.  Verrall,  Euripides  the  Rationalist,  p.  219,  note. 


148  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

We  have  seen  that  with  reference  to  the  plot  these  intermezzic 
choruses  of  New  Comedy  are  irrelevant.  At  times  they  must 
even  have  been  disconcerting.  Notwithstanding,  in  the  light 
of  modern  dramatic  theory  they  are  not  utterly  defenseless. 
The  principle  is  the  same  as  that  which  is  used  to  justify  inter- 
missions between  acts.  "It  would  be  no  gain  but  a  loss,  if  a 
whole  two  hours'  or  three  hours'  action  could  be  carried  through 
in  one  continuous  movement,  with  no  relaxation  of  the  strain 
upon  the  attention  of  the  audience,  and  without  a  single  point 
at  which  the  spectator  might  review  what  was  past  and  anticipate 
what  was  to  come.  The  act  division  positively  enhances  the 
amount  of  pleasurable  emotion  through  which  the  audience 
passes."^ 

A  word  of  caution  is  necessary.  We  have  seen  that  the  use 
of  embolima  and  of  the  sign  XOPOT  to  indicate  their  position 
in  the  play  originated  in  fifth-century  tragedy  (Agathon),  that 
an  actual  instance  of  XOPOT  in  a  fourth-century  tragedy  is 
preserved,  and  that  Aristophanes  brought  this  tragic  innovation 
over  into  comedy,  where  it  was  greatly  extended.  Now  despite 
the  fourth-century  Medea  there  is  good  reason  for  believing  that 
this  practice  never  had  the  vogue  in  later  tragedy  that  it  had  in 
later  comedy.  The  Rhesus  has  erroneously  come  down  to  us 
under  the  name  of  Euripides,  but  is  generally  regarded  by 
scholars  as  the  product  of  some  fourth-century  writer,  the  only 
complete  tragedy  of  that  century  which  is  extant.  It  contains 
no  embolima  and  is  a  natural  continuation  of  the  tradition  of 
Aeschylus,  Sophocles,  and  Euripides.  The  chorus  is  made  up 
of  the  night  watch  in  the  Trojan  camp.  They  go  to  Hector's 
tent  and  rouse  him  with  the  news  that  the  Greek  host  is  on  the 
move.  They  take  part  in  the  dialogue,  almost  capture  Odysseus, 
who  has  entered  the  camp  as  a  spy,  have  a  keen  personal  interest 
in  the  proceedings,  and  sing  choral  odes  which,  though  short,  are 
apposite.  It  is  indisputable  that  from  the  beginnings  of  tragedy  ^ 
to  the  end  the  role  and  importance  of  the  chorus  steadily  declined^ 
but  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  it  ever  fell  so  low  as  was 

'  Cf.  Archer,  Play-making,  p.  142. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CHORAL  ORIGIN  149 

the  case  in  New  Comedy.  This  conclusion  is  confirmed  by 
Seneca's  Latin  tragedies  and  by  the  fragments  of  earher  Roman 
tragedies.  In  the  fragments  of  Ennius,  Pacuvius,  and  Accius 
the  chorus  is  shown  to  be  connected,  sometimes  even  intimately 
connected,  with  the  plot  and  some  of  the  characters.  It  still 
conversed  with  the  actors  and  its  odes  were  not  embolima,  but 
actually  written  in  the  text.  There  are  only  two  signs  of  a 
choral  decHne.  In  the  first  place  the  odes  are  no  longer  char- 
acterized by  the  elaborate  strophic  responsion  which  was  seldom 
lacking  in  the  choral  songs  of  fifth-century  tragedy  in  Athens. 
This  doubtless  means  that  the  chorus  no  longer  engaged  in  the 
complicated,  carefully  balanced  evolutions  which  had  once 
carried  the  choreutae  over  the  broad  expanse  of  the  Greek 
orchestra,  but  sang  and  danced  without  moving  about  so  much 
or  occupying  so  much  space.  In  the  second  place  there  is  no 
evidence  that  the  chorus  and  actors  were  brought  into  actual 
physical  contact  so  frequently  as  in  the  fifth-century  drama  (see 
p.  88,  above).  Of  course,  these  changes  were  not  due  to  physical 
conditions,  since  in  the  Roman  theaters  actors  and  chorus  per- 
formed together  on  a  broad,  low  stage  (see  p.  78,  above).  The 
Romans  seem  to  have  had  less  appreciation  for  choral  perform- 
ances than  the  Greeks,  and  the  chorus  in  contemporary  Greek 
tragedy  ought  to  be  thought  of  as  playing  even  a  larger  part  than 
appears  from  the  fragments  of  Roman  tragedy. 

The  difference  between  tragedy  and  comedy  in  their  treat- 
ment of  the  chorus  arises  from  the  innermost  nature  of  each, 
as  has  been  well  stated  by  Mr.  Cornford:     "The  comic  chorus^ 
has  not,  from  the  standpoint  of  art,  the  justification  and  utiht3m)  i 
which  kept  the  chorus  alive  in  tragedy  to  the  last  days  of  ancient    \  x^ 


drama.  ^  In  tragedy  it  is  needed  for  a  high  function,  not  to  be  so 

well  fulfilleS^  any  other  means.     It  has  to  utter  emotions  that 

"TSnTbe  e:^fessed  only  in  lyric  poetry,  to  say  things  which  the 

audience  longs  to  have  said,  but  which  cannot  be  said  by  any 

Character  on  the  stage Their  function,  too,  is  integral 

and  need  never  decay ..■^  Nothing  of  this  applies  to  the  comic 
chorus'.     The  audience  here  can  completely  reheve  their  feelings 


{ 


I 


I50  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

in  laughter;  there  are  no  thoughts  or  emotions  stirred  that  lie 
too  deep  for  stage  dialogue,  no  remoter  universal  meaning  to  be 
caught  only  in  the  passionate  images  of  lyric  poetry."' 

Playwrights  experience  considerable  difficulty  in  plausibly 
motivating  the  entrances  of  their  characters,  and  this  was  a  more 
troublesome  problem  in  ancient  times  than  it  is  today.  I  shall 
revert  to  the  matter  later  in  connection  with  the  actors  (see 
pp.  229  f.  and  239,  below),  but  I  wish  to  touch  upon  it  now  as 
regards  the  chorus.  Of  course  the  chorus  was  so  inevitably 
present  in  every  Greek  drama  that  it  might  be  thought  needless 
to  account  for  its  presence  at  all.  As  Richter^  said:  "The 
chorus  in  Attic  tragedy  is  so  firmly  estabUshed,  so  much  a  matter 
of  course,  that  its  entrance  does  not  need  to  be  motivated." 
Accordingly,  in  Aeschylus'  Suppliants,  Sophocles'  Philoctetes, 
etc.,  the  choral  entrance  is  unmotived.  In  the  Suppliants, 
however,  the  audience  scarcely  required  to  be  explicitly  told 
that  the  sacred  precinct  with  its  altars,  which  is  what  the 
orchestra  represents  in  this  play,  was  a  natural  place  of  retreat 
for  refugees.  Likewise  it  is  quite  unnecessary  for  Neoptolemus' 
sailors,  in  the  Philoctetes,  to  give  an  excuse  for  following  their 
prince  and  captain  ashore.  On  the  contrary,  in  Aeschylus' 
Persians  there  is  no  self-evident  reason  why  the  Persian  elders 
should  go  to  the  tomb  of  Darius  or  why  Atossa  should  expect  to 
meet  them  there  rather  than  at  the  palace  or  the  council  cham- 
ber, and  Aeschylus  apparently  felt  no  necessity  of  inventing  a 
pretext.  Nevertheless,  in  most  instances  the  Greek  playwrights 
did  motivate  their  choral  entrances.  In  Aeschylus'  Seven 
against  Thebes  the  chorus  of  maidens,  through  fear  of  the  invading 
host,  has  fled  for  protection  to  the  images  of  the  gods  on  the 
acropolis  (vss.  214  and  240).  In  Aeschylus'  Prometheus  Bound 
the  ocean  nymphs  have  been  drawn  to  the  hero's  side  by  the 
sound  of  the  shackles  being  bolted  upon  him  (vss.  133  f.).  In 
the  same  writer's  Libation-Bearers  the  maidservants  are  sent 
from  the  palace  with  offerings  for  the  grave  of  Agamemnon 

'  Cf.  The  Origin  of  Attic  Comedy,  p.  107. 

•  Cf.  Zur  Dramaturgie  des  Aschylus  (1892),  p.  135. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CHORAL  ORIGIN  151 

(vss.  22  f.).  In  his  Eumenides  the  furies  sing  their  first  song 
behind  the  scenes  within  the  temple  at  Delphi,  where  they  have 
been  besetting  the  guilty  Orestes;  presently  Apollo  drives  them 
from  his  sanctuary  into  the  orchestra  (vss.  179  ff,).  Often  the 
chorus  enters  in  response  to  the  cries  of  the  tragic  heroine,*  or  as 
the  bearer  of  news,^  or  as  the  result  of  hearing  a  rumor  ;3  still 
more  often  in  reply  to  a  summons.''  "After  going  through  some 
years  of  Dionysia  it  must  have  been  hard  not  to  smile,  when  the 
'shrieks'  were  raised  or  the  'proclamation'  issued."^  In  Aeschy- 
lus' Eumenides,  vs.  244,  Sophocles'  Oedipus  at  Colonus,  vss. 
117  ff.,  and  Aristophanes'  Acharnians,  vss.  280  ff.,  the  chorus 
comes  upon  the  stage  on  the  track  of  a  transgressor.  Occasion- 
ally the  pretext  is  extremely  trivial,  far-fetched,  or  improbable. 
In  Euripides'  Ion,  vss.  234  f.,  Creusa's  handmaidens  have 
obtained  their  mistress'  permission  to  view  the  sights  at  Delphi. 
The  chorus  in  Euripides'  Phoenician  Maids,  vss.  202  £f.,  are  on 
their  way  from  Tyre  to  Delphi  to  be  consecrated  to  Apollo's  serv- 
ice as  a  thank-offering  and  chance  to  be  caught  in  Thebes  at  the 
time  of  the  country's  invasion.  In  Euripides'  Iphigenia  at  Aulis,  / 
vss.  164  ff.  and  187  f.,  Chalcidian  women  are  constrained  by  curi-/ 
osity  to  cross  the  strait  and  blushingly  visit  the  Greek  camp. 
In  Euripides'  Electra,  vss.  168  ff.,  the  choreutae  come  to  invite 
Electra  to  participate  with  them  in  an  Argive  festival  in  honor 
of  Hera,  and  when  the  princess  replies  that  she  has  "nothing  to 
wear,"  generously  offer  to  lend  her  raiment  from  their  store!  \ 
Nothing  more  is  heard  of  this  motive  during  the  remainder  of 
the  play.  Finally,  the  same  heroine  in  Sophocles'  Electra  inti- 
mates that  the  women  of  the  chorus  have  come  to  soothe  her 
woes  (vss.  129  f.).     Now  when  Aegisthus  was  home  Electra  was 

'  Cf.  Euripides'  Helen,  vs.  184,  and  Medea,  vss.  131  5. 

'  Cf.  Euripides'  Hecabe,  vs.  105,  and  Electra,  vss.  168  ff. 

3  Cf.  Sophocles'  Maidens  of  Trachis,  vs.  103,  and  Ajax,  vs.  143,  Euripides' 
Hippolytus,  vss.  1295.,  etc. 

*  Cf.  Sophocles'  Oedipus  the  King,  vs.  144,  and  Antigone,  vss.  164  f.,  Euripides' 
Trojan  Women,  vss.  143-45,  Aristophanes'  Clouds,  vs.  269,  Peace,  vss.  2962., 
Birds,  vss.  310  f.,  and  Plutus,  vs.  255,  etc. 

5  Cf.  Verrall's  edition  of  Euripides'  Ion  (1890),  p.  Ix. 


152  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

never  permitted  to  leave  the  palace  (cf.  vss.  516  ff.)-  It  is  only 
the  accident  of  his  absence  which  allowed  her  to  pass  the  doors 
on  this  occasion.  But  the  choreutae  were  unaware  of  his 
absence  (vss.  310  ff.).  What  reason,  then,  could  they  have  had 
to  expect  that  they  would  be  able  to  meet  Electra  outside  the 
house  and  comfort  her  ?  Sophocles  supplies  no  answer  to  this 
question.  KaibeP  seems  entirely  justified  in  writing:  "Ihr 
Kommen  ist  durch  nichts  motivirt  als  dadurch,  dass  ein  Chor 
nothwendig  ist." 
f  The  history  and  traditions  of  the  Greek  theater  required  a 

chorus  to  appear  in  each  drama.  But  they  also  required  it  to 
render  several  songs  at  intervals  throughout  the  play.  If  we 
stop  to  analyze  this  convention  it  will  surely  appear  ridiculous 
enough.  How  absurd  that  the  subjects  and  well-wishers  of 
kings  and  princes  should  resort  to  singing  and  dancing  at  the 
crises  of  their  royal  fortunes!  ) Dennis'  sought  a  reductio  ad 
ahsurdum  in  the  dramatization,  a  la  grecque,  of  the  Spanish 
invasion:  "Suppose,  then,  that  an  express  gives  notice  to  Queen 
Elizabeth  of  the  landing  of  the  Spaniards  upon  our  coast,  and 
of  great  number  of  subjects  revolting  and  running  in  to  them. 
The  Queen,  upon  the  reception  of  this  news,  falls  a  lamenting  her 

condition But  then,  Sir,  suppose  as  soon  as  the  Queen 

has  left  off  lamenting,  the  ladies  about  her,  in  their  ruffs  and 
farthingalls,  fell  a  dancing  a  Saraband  to  a  doleful  ditty.  Do  you 
think.  Sir,  that  if  this  had  really  happened  at  White-Hall,  it 
would  have  been  possible  to  have  beheld  it  without  laughing, 
though  one  had  been  never  so  much  concerned  for  his  country  ?  " 
Nevertheless,  despite  the  incongruity,  these  odes  were  so  much  \i 
a  matter  of  course  that  usually  not  even  a  motivation  was 
provided  for  them.  Occasionally,  however,  this  was  done. 
For  example,  in  Euripides'  Alcestis,  vss.  423  f.,  Admetus  invites  '^ 
the  chorus  to  "chant  an  antiphonal  strain  to  the  implacable  god 
below,"  and  to  the  balanced  strophe  and  antistrophe  of  their  song 
(vss.  435-76)  the  remains  of  his  wife  are  borne  into  the  palace. 

'  Cf.  p.  89  of  his  edition  (1896). 

'  Cf.  John  Dennis,  The  Impartial  Critick  (1693). 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CHORAL  ORIGIN  !$$ 

In  Aeschylus'  Eiimenides  the  furies  have  tracked  Orestes  from  '^^ 
Delphi  to  Athens  and  at  last  have  overtaken  him.  But  since  he 
has  invoked  Athena's  protection  and  is  clasping  her  image,  they  . 
cannot  lay  hands  upon  him.  Therefore,  they  resort  to  a  magic 
incantation  to  prevent  his  escaping  them  again:  at  vs.  306  they 
announce  "you  shall  hear  this  spell  to  bind  you,"  referring  to 
and  motivating  the  long  ode  (vss.  307-96)  which  follows. 
Again,  in  Euripides'  Cyclops,  Odysseus  asks  the  chorus  to  accom- 
pany him  and  his  comrades  with  a  song  of  good  cheer  (see  below). 
Sometimes  the  noise  of  fifteen  lusty  choreutae  lifting  their 
voices  in  united  song  sadly  interferes  with  the  verisimilitude  of 
the  scene,  especially  when  the  dramatic  situation  imperatively 
demands  silence.  The  stricken  Orestes,  in  Euripides'  play  of 
that  name,  has  at  last  fallen  asleep,  guarded  by  his  devoted  sister. 
Enter  the  chorus  to  inquire  of  his  condition.  Electra  groans  as 
she  catches  sight  of  them,  well  assured  that  they  will  waken 
Orestes  (vss.  131  ff.).  She  begs  them  to  be  quiet,  to  stand  far 
away  from  his  bed,  to  drop  their  voices  still  lower.  She  inquires 
why  they  have  come ;  warns  them  that  they  will  be  the  death  of 
him  if  they  rouse  him ;  beseeches  them  to  depart,  to  cease  their 
chanting.  It  is  all  in  vain.  The  chorus  enjoin  quiet,  declare 
that  they  are  obeying  her  biddings,  protest  that  their  singing  is 
but  a  murmur,  invoke  winged  night  to  come  upon  him,  etc. 
They  needs  must  enter  and  needs  must  carry  their  part  of  the 
lyric  dialogue  with  Electra,  until  finally  (vs.  211)  her  fears  are 
realized  and  Orestes'  slumber  is  broken.  Similarly,  in  Sophocles' 
Philoctetes,  Neoptolemus  suggests  that  they  give  Philoctetes  an 
opportunity  to  sleep.  But  the  chorus  sings  an  invocation  to 
slumber,  which  under  like  circumstances  in  real  hfe  could  hardly 
have  had  a  very  soporific  effect.  Nevertheless,  Philoctetes 
succumbs  to  it;  whereupon  the  chorus  advise  Neoptolemus  to 
execute  his  sinister  designs,  circumspectly  enjoining  that  his  reply 
to  them  should  be  couched  in  whispered  tones!  An  especially 
striking  instance  occurs  in  Euripides'  Cyclops.  At  vs.  601 
Polyphemus,  well  filled  with  powerful  wine,  has  just  entered  his 
cave;   Odysseus  prays  that  the  liquor  will  close  the  monster's 


154  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

eyelids  in  sleep  and  follows  him  in.  It  is  not  a  moment  suitable 
for  any  unnecessary  noise,  such  as  might  tend  to  keep  the 
Cyclops  awake.  But  the  satyrs,  being  alone  upon  the  stage, 
have  no  option  but  to  chant  an  ode  (vss.  608-23).  At  its 
conclusion  Odysseus  rushes  in  with  an  expostulation: 

Hush,  you  wild  things,  for  Heaven's  sake!— still  as  death! 

Shut  your  lips  tight  together!— not  a  breath! 

Don't  wink,  don't  cough,  for  fear  the  beast  should  wake 

Ere  we  twist  out  his  eye  with  that  red  stake.    [Way's  translation] 

Yet  it  is  a  foregone  conclusion  that  as  soon  as  he  leaves  the  stage 
they  will  be  at  it  once  more.  How  can  this  difficulty  be  glossed 
over  ?  The  poet  makes  two  suggestions.  Odysseus  wishes  the 
satyrs  to  pass  in  and  help  gouge  out  the  Cyclops'  eye,  but  that, 
of  course,  was  theatrically  impossible;  they  prefer  to  sing  an 
incantation  which  will  plunge  the  firebrand,  of  its  own  accord, 
into  their  victim's  brain  (vss.  648  ff.).  We  have  just  seen  that 
magic  as  a  motive  passed  muster  with  Aeschylus,  but  it  was 
different  with  Euripides.  Odysseus  indignantly  ignores  their 
offer,  and  after  a  few  words  of  reproach  he  actually  requests  them 
to  cheer  on  himself  and  his  comrades  at  their  dangerous  task 
(vs.  653).  A  choral  song  in  this  tenor  immediately  follows 
(vss.  655-62).  Thus,  within  the  space  of  thirty  lines,  with  no 
essential  change  in  the  situation,  Odysseus  first  commands  the 
chorus  to  be  quiet  and  then  urges  them  to  sing  1 

The  history  and  traditions  of  the  Greek  theater,  the  necessity 
of  delivering  songs  at  frequent  intervals,  and  the  difficulty  of 
motivating  the  withdrawal  of  the  chorus  and  its  later  return  to 
the  scene  almost  demanded  the  uninterrupted  presence  of  the 
chorus  upon  the  stage.  The  some  half-dozen  exceptions  that 
are  known  to  us  outside  of  New  Comedy  will  be  discussed  later 
(see  pp.  250  f.,  below).  How  unnatural  this  convention  would 
be  can  be  reaUzed  from  Euripides'  Bacchanals,  in  which  Pentheus 
arrested  Dionysus  and  took  .active  measures  against  the  Bac- 
chantes upon  Mt.  Cithaeron  and  yet  allowed  a  chorus  of  the 
new  god's  devotees  (and  foreigners  at  that)  to  remain  practically 
unmolested  before  his  palace  throughout  the  play.     What  a 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CHORAL  ORIGIN  155 

baneful  effect  so  rigid  and  arbitrary  a  rule  had  upon  any  compli- 
cation of  plot  can  readily  be  imagined.  The  situation  was  racily 
described  by  Gray  :^  "How  could  Macbeth  and  his  wife  have  laid 
the  design  for  Duncan's  murder  ?  What  could  they  have  said 
to  each  other  in  the  hall  at  midnight,  not  only  if  a  chorus,  but 
if  a  single  mouse,  had  been  stirring  there  ?  Could  Hamlet  have 
met  the  ghost,  or  taken  his  mother  to  task  in  their  company  ? 
If  Othello  had  said  a  harsh  word  to  his  wife  before  them,  would 
they  not  have  danced  to  the  window  and  called  the  watch?" 
In  the  Agamemnon,  Clytemnestra  had  to  address  to  her  returning'^ 
lord  words  of  loyal  greeting  the  falsity  of  which  she  knew  the 
chorus  was  well  aware  of.  Aeschylus  strove  to  surmount  the 
difficulty  by  having  the  queen  turn  first  to  the  choreutae: 
"Reverend  citizens  of  Argos,  I  feel  no  shame  to  mention  my 
husband-loving  ways  before  you,  for  as  we  mortals  grow  older 
we  lose  such  blushing  fear"  (vss.  8555.),  We  are  to  suppose 
that  her  effrontery  in  this  and  other  respects  intimidated  the 
meticulous  elders  and  prevented  their  denouncing  her  to  Aga- 
memnon. In  Sophocles'  Oedipus  the  King,  Creon  is  bringing  an 
oracular  response  from  Delphi  and  meets  the  king  before  the 
Theban  palace.  In  reply  to  Oedipus'  eager  question  he  lets  his 
eyes  rest  on  the  choreutae  for  a  moment  and  says :  "If  you  would 
hear  while  these  are  near,  I  am  ready  to  speak;  or  else  to  go 
within."  In  real  life  the  second  alternative  probably  would  have 
been  adopted;  on  the  Greek  stage  it  was  impossible  (cf  .pp.  237-41, 
below) .  Accordingly,  Oedipus  makes  answer  as  follows :  "  Speak 
before  all,  for  I  bear  more  sorrow  for  these  than  for  my  own  life" 
(vss.  91-94).  In  Sophocles'  Electra,  Orestes  discovers  himself 
and  his  design  to  his  sister  in  the  presence  of  the  chorus,  "so 
that  he  entrusts  a  secret,  upon  which  his  empire  and  life  depends, 
in  the  hands  of  sixteen  women. "^  The  implication  is  that  a  body 
of  women  cannot  keep  a  secret  under  any  circumstances.  Yet 
Sophocles  has  done  what  he  could.  At  vs.  1202  Orestes'  iden- 
tity is  not  yet  revealed,  but  his  sympathy  has  begun  to  make 

'  Cf .  Tovey,  Letters  of  Thomas  Gray,  II,  293  f . 
'  Cf.  Dennis,  op.  cil. 


156  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

Electra  suspicious.  She  inquires :  "  Can  it  be  that  you  are  some 
unknown  kinsman  ?  "  And  when  Orestes,  glancing  at  the  chorus, 
replies:  "I  would  answer,  if  these  as  friends  were  present," 
she  reassures  him  by  saying:  "But  they  are  friends,  so  that  you 
can  speak  without  mistrust."  This  device  was  borrowed  by 
Euripides  in  his  Orestes,  vss.  1103  f.  Pylades  says:  "Silence 
now,  for  I  put  small  trust  in  women,"  meaning  the  chorus;  but 
Orestes  replies:   "Fear  not,  for  these  are  friends  to  us." 

In  general,  the  constant  presence  of  the  chorus  bore..mDre~\  | 
heavily  i^n  Euripides  than  upon  either  Aeschylus  or  Sophocles./  1 
since  his  plots  were  more  compHcated  than  theirs.  Usually 
the  Euripidean  choruses  are  bound  to  secrecy  by  an  oath  or 
promise.  But  this  is  only  to  shift  the  problem,  not  to  solve  it. 
In  real  life  groups  of  people  do  not  take  such  oaths  without  an 
adequate  reason.  In  his  Hippolytus,  vss.  710-14,  the  chorus 
swear  by  Artemis  to  conceal  their  knowledge  of  Phaedra's  guilt, 
and  they  remain  true  to  their  oath,  though  by  their  so  doing  the 
innocent  Hippolytus  is  brought  to  ruin  and  death  before  their 
eyes.  But  their  willingness  to  take  such  an  oath  is  without 
motive  except  as  one  is  impKed  in  their  kindly  feeling  toward  the 
heroine.  In  Euripides'  Iphigenia  among  the  Taurians  and  Helen 
the  choruses  consist  of  Greek  slaves,  who  would  naturally,  be- 
cause of  racial  ties,  plot  against  their  barbarian  masters  in  order 
to  help  their  fellow-countrywomen.  Other  reasons,  however,  are 
cited.  In  both  plays  the  actors  promise  to  rescue  the  chorus  as 
well  as  themselves  (vss.  1067  f,  and  1387  ff.,  respectively).  In 
the  Iphigenia  an  additional  motive  for  choral  secrecy  is  found  in 
an  appeal  to  sex  loyalty:  "We  are  women,"  says  Iphigenia, 
"a  sex  most  staunch  to  one  another,  most  trustworthy  in  keeping 
common  counsel"  (vss.  106 1  f.).  The  same  plea  recurs,  in  an 
intensified  form,  in  Euripides'  Medea.  Theatrical  conditions 
compelled  Medea  to  take  the  chorus  into  her  confidence,  and  she 
bases  her  request  for  their  silence  not  only  upon  the  ground  of 
their  common  womanhood  but  also  upon  the  fact  that  she  is 
alone,  sadly  wronged,  and  in  distress  (vss.  230-66).  But  this 
chorus  consists  of  Corinthian  women  in  whose  sight  Medea  must 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CHORAL  ORIGIN  157 

be  a  foreigner,  nay  worse,  a  barbarian.  It  is  so  utterly  improb- 
able that  womanly  sympathy  should  cause  Greek  women  to 
acquiesce  in  a  barbarian's  plans  for  the  assassination  of  their 
sovereign  and  his  daughter  that  Professor  VerralP  supposed  a 
chorus  to  have  been  mechanically  added  in  a  subsequent  revision 
(our  present  text)  to  a  play  originally  written  for  private  pres- 
entation without  a  chorus.  On  the  other  hand,  the  chorus  are 
occasionally  permitted  to  act  as  real  people  would  and  com- 
municate their  secret.  Thus,  in  Euripides'  Ion,  vss.  666  f., 
Xuthus  threatens  his  wife's  handmaidens  with  death  if  they 
betray  to  her  the  supposed  fact  that  Ion  is  his  son.  Neverthe- 
less, this  is  exactly  what  they  do,  declaring  to  her:  **It  shall  be 
told,  though  I  die  twice  over"  (vs.  760) ;  and  thus  they  precipi- 
tate one  of  the  most  thrilling  scenes  in  Greek  tragedy.  This 
is  a  characteristic  product  of  Greek  dexterity.  Not  content 
to  surmount  a  troublesome  obstacle,  they  actually  derive  an 
advantage  from  it. 

We  have  seen  that  it  was  practically  impossible  for  the  chorus  ^ 
to  leave  the  scene  of  action  during  the  play.  This  convention  / 
was  particularly  awkward  when  circumstances  arose  which 
would  naturally  demand  their  presence  elsewhere.  Such  a 
situation  was. most  frequently  brought  about  by  a  murder  or 
suicide  just  behind  the  scenes.  Up  to  some  thirty  years  ago  an 
explanation  of  the  chorus'  failure  to  pass  through  the  back  scene 
under  such  circumstances  might  be  sought  in  the  physical 
conditions,  since  until  then  it  was  supposed  that  the  Greek  actors 
had  stood  upon  a  stage  ten  or  twelve  feet  above  the  chorus  (see 
p.  78,  above).  This  interpretation  never  had  more  than  half 
a  leg  to  stand  upon,  inasmuch  as  the  extant  plays  prove  con- 
clusively that,  whatever  the  physical  conditions,  intercourse 
between  actors  and  chorus  was  quite  feasible  and  was  often 
resorted  to  (see  p.  88,  above) ;  but  it  lost  the  slightest  claim  to 
acceptance  after  Dorpfeld's  excavations  and  a  re-examination  of 
the  evidence  showed  that  during  the  classical  period  of  Greek 
drama  chorus  and  actors  had  stood  upon  the  same  level  (see 

^  Four  Plays  of  Euripides  (1905),  pp.  125-30. 


158  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

p.  117,  above).  Moreover,  it  is  illuminating  to  note  that  the 
chorus  found  it  as  difl&cult  to  leave  the  scene  of  action  during 
the  play  by  the  side  entrances  as  by  the  doors  in  the  background. 
By  vs.  1070  of  Sophocles'  Philoctetes,  Odysseus  and  Neoptolemus 
have  gained  possession  of  Heracles'  bow  and  are  preparing  to 
return  to  their  ship.  As  the  chorus  consists  of  sailors,  these 
would  naturally  leave  with  their  commander.  But  the  play 
was  not  to  end  at  this  point,  and  the  poet  wished  the  chorus  to 
sing  at  vs.  1095.  Accordingly,  Philoctetes  appeals  to  the  chorus 
not  to  desert  him  (vss.  1070  f.),  and  upon  their  referring  the 
request  to  Neoptolemus  he  replies,  very  improbably,  that  at  the 
risk  of  his  being  considered  soft-hearted  they  may  tarry  until 
the  ship  is  ready  to  sail  and  that  possibly  by  that  time  Philoctetes 
will  have  decided  to  accompany  them  to  Troy  (vss.  1074-79). 
No ;  the  convention  was  derived  from  the  fact  that  by  origin  the 
chorus  was  an  integral  part  of  Greek  drama  and  had  a  role  to 
play  which  required  its  continual  presence;  that  is  to  say,  leaving 
the  stage  is  not,  with  rare  exceptions,  "the  kind  of  action  that 
a  <  Greek >  chorus  can  ever  perform."' 

But  as  already  intimated,  the  difficulty  arose  most  frequently 
and  most  glaringly  when  murder  was  threatened  or  was  actually 
being  committed  behind  the  scenes.  In  such  a  case  ''  to  say  that 
convention  prevented  the  chorus  from  entering  the  palace  may  be 
true;  but  such  a  convention  was  of  little  assistance  to  a  great 
dramatist  who  keenly  felt  the  force  of  cause  and  effect.  Such 
an  artist  knows  that  even  convention  must  be  met  in  a  natural 
way.  Does  convention  prevent  the  entrance  of  the  chorus  into 
the  palace?  Then  common  sense  and  ordinary  conduct  must 
as  well,  else  there  is  an  unreality  which  is  absent  in  a  work  of 
art"  (Stephenson,  op.  ciL,  p.  44).  As  successful  a  solution  of 
the  problem  as  any  Greek  dramatist  ever  devised  occurs  in 
Aeschylus'  Agamemnon.  The  chorus  consists  of  Argive  elders, 
who  must  not  be  represented  as  cravenly  betraying  their  lord. 
On  the  other  hand,  when  Agamemnon's  cry  of  agony  is  heard  at 
vs.  1343.  they  cannot  be  allowed  to  rush  in  and  prevent  his  mur- 

'  Cf.  Murray,  Euripides  and  His  Age  (1913),  p.  238. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CHORAL  ORIGIN  159 

der.  This  would  alter  the  whole  course  of  the  story  and  at  the 
same  time  would  cause  an  unparalleled  lacuna  in  the  action 
of  the  play  by  leaving  the  stage,  for  a  considerable  interval, 
absolutely  bare  of  performers.  As  soon  as  Agamemnon's  voice 
is  heard,  the  choreutae  fall  into  a  wrangle,  each  declaring  his 
opinion  in  turn  (vss.  1346-71);  but  before  they  can  reach  a 
decision  and  act  upon  it,  Clytemnestra  and  the  bodies  of  her 
husband  and  of  Cassandra  are  revealed. 

Except  that  the  debate  is  here  so  extended,  the  same  device 
occurs  again  and  again.  In  Euripides'  Hecahe,  Polymestor  has 
been  enticed  within  the  tents,  and  cries  out  that  he  has  been 
blinded  and  his  children  slain  but  that  his  enemies  will  not 
escape  (vss.  1034-40) .  The  chorus  of  Trojan  captive  women  ask 
whether  they  ought  not  to  rush  in  to  help  thwart  this  counter- 
stroke  (vss.  1042  f.),  but  at  once  Hecabe  appears  and  obviates 
the  need  of  their  entering  (vs.  1044).  Similarly,  in  Euripides' 
Andromache,  vss.  815-19,  Hermione's  nurse  declares  that  her 
strength  has  given  out  in  trying  to  prevent  her  mistress'  suicide, 
and  beseeches  the  chorus  to  enter  the  palace  and  lend  their  aid. 
The  slaves  acknowledge  that  they  hear  the  cries  of  servants  from 
within,  which  confirm  the  nurse's  story;  but  at  this  moment 
Hermione  herself  slips  from  the  restraining  clutches  of  her 
attendants  and  darts  upon  the  stage.  Less  successful  is  the 
scene  in  Euripides'  Eippolytus.  At  vss.  776  £f.  a  handmaid 
raises  the  cry  that  Phaedra  has  hanged  herself,  and  begs  someone 
to  cut  her  down.  One  semi-chorus  inquires  whether  they  should 
not  render  this  service,  but  the  other  rejoins  that  there  are 
attendants  nearer  at  hand  to  do  so  and  that  ofl&cious  meddlers 
often  endanger  their  own  lives!  Immediately  thereafter  a 
further  cry  announces  that  the  queen  is  dead  past  recovery  (vss. 
786  f.).  One  more  illustration  will  suffice.  The  failure  of  the 
chorus  to  rescue  Medea's  children  is  doubly  motived :  first,  by  the 
Colchian's  threat  to  anyone  that  might  interfere  (Euripides' 
Medea,  vss.  1053  f.),  and  secondly,  by  the  fact  that  the  palace 
doors  are  barred,  so  that  Jason's  servants  have  to  break  them 
down  (vss.   13125.).     It  has  also  been  conjectured  that  the 


l6o  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

chorus'  description  of  Medea  as  iron-hearted  and  like  a  rock 
(vss.  1279  ff.)  is  intended  to  suggest  that  they  felt  unable  to  cope 
with  so  masterful  and  relentless  a  creature.  This  explanation 
finds  some  support  in  the  undoubted  fact  that  the  necessity  of 
comparative  inactivity  on  the  part  of  the  chorus  had  much  to  doj 
with  the  Greek  tragedians'  fondness  for  choruses  of  women  and^ 
old  men.  In  speaking  of  the  elders  in  Aeschylus'  Agamemnon. 
Cornford'  says  that  they  "cannot  enter  the  palace;  not  because 
the  door  is  locked,  nor  yet  because  they  are  feeble  old  men. 
Rather  they  are  old  men  because  an  impassible  barrier  of  con- 
vention is  forming  between  chorus  and  actors,  and  their  age  gives 
colour  to  their  powerlessness. ' '  In  concluding  this  paragraph  I  wish 
to  point  out  that  the  chorus's  inability  to  enter  the  background 
during  the  play  existed  quite  independently  of  the  threat  of 
murder.  In  Euripides'  Ion  Creusa's  maidservants,  by  the 
express  permission  of  their  mistress,  examine  and  admire  the 
sculpture  on  the  outer  walls  of  Apollo's  temple  at  Delphi  (vss. 
183-218).  In  real  life  it  would  be  inevitable  that  a  crowd  bent 
on  sight-seeing  should  soon  wish  to  pass  inside  and  view  the 
omphalus  and  other  objects  of  interest;  and  this,  of  course,  the 
poet  cannot  allow.  Accordingly,  when  the  point  is  raised  (vss. 
219  ff.),  Ion  replies  that  it  is  forbidden  to  enter  the  inner  fane 
except  after  the  offer  of  sacrifice. 

Finally,  even  at  the  very  end  of  the  play  the  chorus  could  not 
leave  the  stage  except  after  the  actors  or  in  their  company. 
This  convention  arose  from  the  same  conditions  as  have  already 
been  mentioned,  but  produced  some  incongruities  of  its  own. 
For  example,  in  Euripides'  Iphigenia  among  the  Taurians  and 
Helen  the  Greek  slaves  in  the  choruses  are  promised,  as  a  reward 
for  their  silence  and  help,  a  return  to  Greece  (see  p.  156,  above). 
But  since  in  the  latter  play  Helen  and  Menelaus  make  their 
final  exit  nearly  five  hundred  lines  before  the  end  of  the  piece, 
it  is  manifestly  impossible  for  the  chorus  to  be  spared.  Conse- 
quently they  are  most  unconscionably  left  in  the  lurch  without 
a  single  word  being  said  of  their  rescue.     In  the  Iphigenia  they 

'  Thucydides  Mytkistoricus  (1907),  p.  147  (italics  mine). 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CHORAL  ORIGIN  l6l 

fare  no  better  up  to  the  time  when  Orestes'  ship  is  driven  back 
to  land;  but  in  the  final  outcome  Athena  appears  and  includes 
the  chorus  among  those  whom  King  Thoas  must  allow  to  depart 
in  peace  (vss.  1467  f.).  Possibly  a  desire  to  keep  this  promise  to 
the  chorus  was  one  of  the  considerations  that  induced  the  poet 
to  have  the  ship  forced  back  to  shore  and  thus  to  make  a  divine 
apparition  unavoidable. 

So  inextricably  is  the  chorus  interwoven  with  Greek  drama^    1/^ 
that  its  influence  may  be  detected  almost  anywhere.     I  have 
traced  some  of  the  broader  effects,  however,  and  in  subsequent 
chapters  minor  results  will  be  mentioned  in  connection  with  other 
factors.  ~' 


'Eicet  (sc.   if  ■'■o'S  dyCoffC)  ft-ti^ov  duvavrai 
vvv  rdy  iroiijrwv  ol   viroKpiTal. — ArisxotlE. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ACTORS' 

The  dithyramb  and  the  comus,  together  with  their  derivatives, 
early  tragedy  and  early  comedy,  were  entirely  choral.  Actors 
were  first  developed  in  tragedy  (see  pp.  i6  and  48,  n.  i,  above). 
Inasmuch  as  the  early  dithyramb  and  early  tragedy  were  devoted 
to  the  worship  of  Dionysus  and  since  their  choreutae  were  his 
attendant  sprites  (satyrs  or  sileni),  it  followed  that  their  songs 
would  mostly  take  the  form  of  prayers  addressed  to  him,  hymns 
in  his  honor,  or  odes  descriptive  of  his  adventures,  sufferings,  etc. 
A  lyric  duet  between  the  coryphaeus  and  the  other  choreutae 
was  also  possible.  Such  performances  bore  much  the  same 
relationship  to  later  tragedy  that  the  modern  oratorio  bears  to  a 
sacred  opera.     That  is  to  say,  the  choreutae  were  not  differen- 

'  In  addition  to  the  works  mentioned  on  pp.  xvii  and  xx  f .,  above,  cf .  Detscheff, 
De  Tragoediariim  Graecarum  Conformatione  Scaenica  ac  Dramatica  (1904);  Rees, 
"The  Meaning  of  Parachoregema,"  Classical  Philology,  II  (1907),  387  ff.;  The 
So-called  Rule  of  Three  Actors  in  the  Classical  Greek  Drama  (1908);  "The  Number 
of  the  Dramatic  Company  in  the  Period  of  the  Technitae,"  American  Journal  of 
Philology,  XXXI  (1910),  435.,  and  "The  Three  Actor  Rule  in  Menander," 
Classical  Philology,  V  (1910),  291  ff.;  O'Connor,  Chapters  in  the  History  of  Actors 
and  Acting  in  Ancient  Greece  (1908);  Leo,  Der  Monolog  im  Drama  (1908),  and 
Plautinische  Forschmigen''  (191 2),  pp.  226  ff.;  Listmann,  Die  Technik  des  Drei- 
gesprdchs  in  der  griechischcn  Tragodie  (19 10);  Kaffenberger,  Das  Dreischauspieler- 
gesetz  in  der  griechischcn  Tragodie  (191 1);  Foster,  The  Divisions  in  the  Plays  of 
Plautus  and  Terence  (1913);  Stephenson,  Some  Aspects  of  the  Dramatic  Art  of 
Aeschylus  (1913);  Graf,  Szenische  Untersuchungen  zu  Menander  (T914);  and 
Conrad,  The  Technique  of  Continuous  Action  in  Roman  Comedy  (1915),  reviewed  by 
Flickinger  in  Classical  Weekly,  X  (1917),  1475. 

Fig.  66  is  taken  from  Baumeister's  Denkmdler,  Fig.  1637,  and  belongs  to  the 
Roman  period.  The  apparent  height  of  the  tragic  actors  is  said  to  have  been 
increased  by  means  of  the  St/cos  projecting  above  the  head  and  of  thick-soled 
boots  {Kodopvoi),  both  represented  in  Fig.  66.  The  employment  of  such  para- 
phernaUa  rests  upon  late  evidence,  however,  and  has  been  disputed  for  fifth-century 
tragedy;  cf.  for  example  Smith,  "The  Use  of  the  High-soled  Shoe  or  Buskin  in 
Greek  Tragedy  of  the  Fifth  or  Fourth  Centuries  B.C.,"  Harvard  Studies,  XVI  (1905), 
123  ff.     For  the  costumes  of  comic  actors,  see  pp.  46  f.,  above. 

162 


Fig.  66 
IVOkV    SIATUETTE  OF  A  TRAGIC  ACTOR 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ACTORS  163 

tiated  in  character,  and  there  was  no  dramatic  impersonation 
(/it/xTycrts) ;  despite  their  costumes  the  chorus  sang  as  human 
worshipers  of  Dionysus,  not  in  accordance  with  their  character 
as  sileni.  From  the  duet  between  the  coryphaeus  and  the  other 
choreutae  it  was  only  a  step,  but  a  highly  important  one,  no 
longer  to  {h^nk  of  the  coryphaeus  as  one  silenus  among  his  fellows 
but  as  Dio4ysus  himself  in  the  midst  of  his  followers,  and  then 
to  set  hin^  off  by  himself  as  an  actor  in  contradistinction  to  the 
choreuta^  and  their  Jiiew)  coryphaeus.  This  innovation  was  the 
work  of  U^feeSpisTand  however  long  the  name  "tragedy"  may 
ahready  have  been  applied  to  the  previous  performances  this  step 
marked  the  first  beginning  of  tragedy  in  the  modern  sense  (see 
p.  16 f,,  above).  Now  that  the  new  actor  had  to  impersonate 
Dionysus,  the  necessity  rested  likewise  upon  the  sileni  in  the 
chorus  to  Hve  up  to  their  own,  previously  neglected,  character. 
It  was  not  long  until  by  a  change  of  mask  and  costume  the  actor 
was  enabled  to  represent  other  personages  as  well  as  Dionysus 
himself.  This  practice  made  possible  a  much  more  involved  type 
of  drama  than  the  limited  resources  would  at  first  glance  seem  to 
permit. 

Aeschylus'  earhest  extant  play,  the  Suppliants,  belongs  to 
the  two-actor  period,  but  employs  the  second  actor  so  sparingly 
as  to  afford  a  very  good  idea  of  the  possibiHties  of  the  one-actor 
play.  Omitting  the  choral  odes,  the  action  runs  as  follows:  The 
fifty  daughters  of  Danaus  (the  chorus)  seek  sanctuary  near  Argos 
to  escape  the  unwelcome  suit  of  their  cousins.  At  vs.  176 
Danaus  begins  to  admonish  his  daughters  and  a  dialogue  (vss. 
204-33)  ensues  between  them.  At  vs.  234  the  king  of  Argos 
enters  and  engages  with  the  chorus  in  a  dialogue  and  a  lyric  duet 
(vss.  234-417).  During  this  scene  Danaus  is  present,  silent, 
inactive,  and  all  but  unnoticed;  cf.  vs.  318.  Of  course  in  a 
one-actor  play  this  character  must  have  been  removed  so  that 
the  single  actor  might  reappear  as  the  king.  But  that  could 
easily  have  been  managed  and  would  affect  the  present  piece 
in  no  essential  way.  After  an  ode  the  dialogue  between  the 
king  and  the  chorus  is  resumed  (vss.  438-523),  broken  in  upon 


1 64  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

only  by  a  brief  conversation  between  the  king  and  Danaus  (vss. 
480-503).  The  former  instructs  Danaus  how  to  supplicate  the 
citizens  in  the  town  and,  upon  the  latter's  request  for  protection, 
orders  attendants  to  accompany  him.  Here  for  the  first  time 
are  the  two  actors  simultaneously  employed,  but  their  words 
serve  no  more  important  purpose  than  to  motivate  the  exit  of 
one  of  them.  At  vs.  523  the  king  likewise  withdraws.  At 
vs.  600  Danaus  reappears  and  with  but  a  slight  interruption  on 
the  part  of  his  daughters  (vss.  602-4)  informs  them  that  the 
Argives  have  decided  to  shield  them  (vss.  600  f.,  605-24).  At 
vs.  710  Danaus  descries  the  suitors'  fleet  in  the  distance  and 
declares,  "I  will  return  with  helpers  and  defenders"  (vs.  726). 
Nevertheless,  the  scene  is  continued  until  vs.  775,  when  Danaus 
departs  to  spread  the  alarm,  incidentally  releasing  this  actor  to 
play  the  part  of  the  suitors'  herald.  At  vs.  836  the  herald  enters 
and  to  the  accompaniment  of  a  lyric  duet  between  himself  and 
the  chorus  tries  to  drag  the  Danaids  away.  At  vs.  907  this 
attempt  at  violence  is  brought  to  a  standstill  by  the  king's 
return.  The  following  altercation  between  the  herald  and  the 
king  (vss.  907-53)  provides  the  only  bit  of  genuine  dramatic 
conflict,  visually  represented,  in  the  play  and  the  only  instance 
of  both  actors  being  fully  made  use  of  together.  In  a  one-actor 
play  such  a  passage  would  have  been  impossible  but  could  have 
been  presented  indirectly  by  means  of  a  messenger's  narrative. 
At  vs.  953  the  herald  withdraws,  discomforted,  and  the  king 
turns  to  the  chorus  (vss.  954-65).  In  reply  the  chorus  ask  that 
their  father  be  returned  to  them  (vss.  9665.).  The  interval 
having  been  sufficient  to  enable  the  actor  to  shift  from  the  mask 
and  costume  of  the  herald  to  those  of  Danaus,  the  latter  re-enters 
at  vs.  980  and  converses  with  his  daughters  until  the  final  ode. 
Of  all  the  extant  plays  of  Aeschylus  the  Suppliants  probably 
makes  the  slightest  appeal  to  the  modern  student.  Its  principal 
value  for  us  hes  in  the  fact  that  it  could  readily  be  revamped  for 
presentation  by  one  actor  and  in  the  light  which  it  thus  sheds 
upon  the  character  of  one-actor  drama. 

Several  tinies  in  this  play,  as  appears  from  the  foregoing 
outline,  an  actor  participates  in  a  dialogue  with  the  chorus.     It 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ACTORS  165 

was  not  the  practice  for  the  choral  part  in  such  dialogues  to  be 
spoken  by  all  the  choreutae  in  unison,  but  by  the  chorus  leader 
alone.  Thus,  though  a  sharp  distinction  was  drawn  between 
actors  and  chorus,  the  former  being  furnished  by  the  state  and  the 
latter  by  private  means  (cf .  pp.  270  f.,  below),  yet  the  coryphaeus 
served  as  a  bond  of  connection  between  the  two.  We  have  seen 
how  the  first  actor  was  developed  from  the  chorus  leader; 
doubtless  the  successive  additions  to  the  number  of  actors  were 
suggested  in  each  case  by  the  advantages  arising  from  this 
quasi-histrionic  function  of  the  coryphaeus.  Thus  in  addition 
to  the  regular  actors,  at  each  stage  of  development  the  tragic 
poet  always  had  at  his  disposal  also  one  quasi-actor  for  carrying 
on  his  dialogues.  And  the  comic  poet  always  had  two  such 
quasi-actors,  since  the  leaders  of  the  two  semi-choruses  could 
be  used  in  this  way  (see  p.  44,  above).  In  the  one-actor  period 
this  quasi-histrionic  function  of  the  coryphaeus  resulted  in  a 
convention  which  continued  long  after  the  necessity  for  it  had 
passed  away.  It  is  obvious  that  at  that  juncture  the  single  actor 
could  converse  with  no  one  but  the  chorus.  This  practice  became 
so  stereotyped  that  in  the  two-actor  period  whenever  a  character 
came  into  the  presence  of  the  chorus  and  another  actor  he  directed 
his  remarks  to  the  chorus  before  turning  to  the  other  character. 
Of  course  oftentimes  this  was  the  natural  thing  to  do.  But  the 
force  of  tradition  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  the  principle  was 
sometimes  observed  under  unfavorable  conditions.  Thus,  as 
we  have  already  observed,  in  the  Suppliants  the  king  enters  at 
vs.  234  and  at  once  begins  a  dialogue  with  the  chorus,  ignoring 
their  father  until  vs.  480.  Greek  respect  for  age  and  partiality  > 
for  the  masculine  sex  make  this  arrangement  in  a  Greek  play 
very  unnatural.  Again,  in  the  Persians  a  messenger  from  Greece 
ignores  his  queen  (vss.  249  ff.)  and  reports  the  Persian  disaster 
to  the  chorus  of  elders.  Not  until  vs.  290  does  Atossa  address 
him,  and  in  typical  Greek  fashion  Aeschylus  strives  to  make  her 
words  gloss  over  the  unreality  of  his  characters'  comphance  with 
convention.  "For  a  long  time  have  I  kept  silence,"  she  begins, 
"dumbfounded  by  catastrophe.  This  ill  exceeds  my  power  to 
tell  or  ask  our  woes."    The  same  convention  persisted  even  into 


l66  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

the  three-actor  period.  Clytemnestra's  husband  has  been  gone 
ten  years  or  more,  yet  she  must  excuse  herself  to  the  chorus 
(Aeschylus'  Agamemnon,  vss.  855-78)  before  greeting  her  lord 
(see  p.  155,  above).  Another  instance  occurs  in  Euripides' 
Children  of  Heracles,  vss.  120  ff.  Moreover  the  coryphaeus 
sometimes  exercises  an  important  influence  upon  the  plot.  For 
example,  in  Aeschylus'  Libation-Bearers,  vss.  766  ff.,  it  is  the 
coryphaeus  who  induces  the  servant  to  alter  the  wording  of  the 
summons  with  which  she  is  sent  to  Aegisthus.  By  this  device 
he  comes  unescorted  and  falls  an  easy  victim  to  the  conspirators. 
In  view  of  the  normal  employment  of  the  coryphaeus  as  a 
quasi-actor,  Aeschylus  took  an  easy  and  obvious  step,  or  rather 
half-step,  in  advance  when  he  introduced  the  second  actor.  We 
have  seen  that  the  deuteragonist  was  already  made  use  of,  though 
sparingly,  in  the  Suppliants.  Also  the  Persians,  the  Seven 
against  Thebes  (except  possibly  the  closing  scene;  see  p.  175, 
below),  and  the  Prometheus  Bound  require  but  two  actors  for 
presentation.  The  great  advantage  accruing  from  the  second 
actor  is  manifest.  Instead  of  being  compelled  to  resort  to  a 
messenger's  report  of  an  altercation  or  dialogue  between  two 
personages,  the  playwright  was  now  enabled  to  bring  the  char- 
acters face  to  face  in  person  upon  his  stage.  On  the  other  hand, 
so  limited  a  number  of  actors  often  seriously  embarrassed  the 
dramatist  in  the  economy  of  his  play.  Perhaps  the  best  example 
of  this  is  afforded  by  Aeschylus'  Prometheus.  In  the  opening 
scene  Cratos  and  Bia  (Strength  and  Force)  drag  Prometheus  to  a 
remote  spot  in  Scythia  and  Hephaestus  nails  him  to  a  crag. 
How  can  these  four  characters  be  presented  by  two  actors  ?  In 
the  first  place  Bia  has  no  speaking  part,  and  mutes  were  freely 
employed  in  addition  to  the  regular  actors.  In  the  second  place 
Prometheus  was  represented  by  a  wooden  figure.  This  explains 
how  it  was  possible  for  a  nail  to  be  driven  right  through  his 
breast  (vss.  64  f.).  It  explains  also  why  so  great  emphasis  is 
laid  upon  the  fastening  process;  first  the  hands  are  pinned  down 
(vs.  55),  then  the  arms  (vs.  60),  the  breast  (vs.  65)  and  sides  (vs. 
71),  and  finally  the  legs  (vs.  74).     Thus  the  immobility  and  Hfe- 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ACTORS  167 

lessness  of  the  supposed  Prometheus  are  accounted  for.  Neither 
Hephaestus'  sympathy  nor  Cratos'  insults  ehcit  a  single  word  of 
reply  from  his  lips.  Although  this  silence  arises  naturally  from 
the  Titan's  unyielding  disposition,  yet  the  real  reason  lies  in  the 
use  of  a  dummy.  At  vs.  81  Hephaestus  retires,  and  after  six 
lines  of  further  insults  Cratos  follows  him.  A  slight  pause  would 
naturally  ensue,  so  that  Prometheus  might  be  sure  that  his  enemy 
had  passed  beyond  the  sound  of  his  voice.  These  intervals 
enabled  the  former  actor  to  take  his  place  at  some  crack  or 
opening  behind  the  lay  figure  and  break  Prometheus'  speech- 
lessness (vs.  88).  The  other  actor  reappears  in  a  succession  of 
roles  throughout  the  play,  as  Oceanus  (vs.  284),  lo  (vs.  561), 
and  Hermes  (vs.  944) ;  but  these  shifts  were  easily  managed. 

Soon  after  Sophocles'  first  appearance  (468  B.C.  or  possibly 
471  B.c.)^  he  introduced  the  third  actor.  First  of  all  this  inno- 
vation permitted  a  larger  number  of  characters  to  be  presented. 
In  Aeschylus'  two-actor  plays  the  characters  number  three  in  the 
Suppliants  in  addition  to  the  chorus  and  coryphaeus,  four  in  the 
Persians,  six  in  the  Prometheus,  and  five  in  Seven  against  Thebes. 
In  the  three-actor  plays  Aeschylus'  characters  range  from  five  to 
seven,  Sophocles'  from  five  to  nine,  and  Euripides'  from  seven 
to  eleven,  except  that  Euripides'  satyr-play,  the  Cyclops,  has 
but  three  characters.  Secondly,  a  third  actor  allowed  greater 
flexibility  in  handling  entrances  and  exits.  An  artificial  pause, 
more  or  less  improbably  motived,  to  enable  an  actor  to  change 
his  mask  and  costume  before  appearing  in  another  role  would 
now  be  less  frequently  required  (see  further,  p.  231,  below). 
Thirdly,  it  allowed  three  personages  to  appear  side  by  side  in  the 
same  scene,  whereby  in  turn  a  certain  aesthetic  effect  became 
possible.  I  refer  to  the  varied  emotions  which  one  actor's 
statements  or  conduct  sometimes  produce  in  two  other  char- 
acters. An  excellent  illustration  is  afforded  by  the  scene  with 
the  Corinthian  messenger  in  Sophocles'  Oedipus  the  King,  vss. 
924  ff.     As  the  awful  conviction  is  brought  home  to  Jocaste  that 

'  Cf.  Capps,  "The  Introduction  of  Comedy  into  the  City  Dionysia,"  University 
of  Chicago  Decennial  Publications,  VI,  269,  n.  37. 


1 68  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

Oedipus  is  her  son  as  well  as  her  husband,  she  rushes  from  the 
stage  to  hang  herself;  but  Oedipus,  on  the  contrary,  still  lacking 
the  fatal  clue,  becomes  elated  at  the  prospect  of  discovering  his 
parents'  identity.  Similarly  in  the  same  playwright's  Electra, 
vss.  660  ff,  the  false  report  of  Orestes'  death  cheers  his  mother 
with  the  assurance  that  her  murder  of  Agamemnon  must  now 
remain  unavenged,  but  plunges  Electra  into  the  desperation  of 
despair.  Such  situations  would  have  been  impossible  in  the 
two-actor  drama.  Finally,  the  introduction  of  a  third  actor 
contributed  to  the  decay  of  the  chorus.  We  have  already  noted 
in  the  last  chapter  how  the  importance  of  the  chorus  steadily 
dechned,  especially  in  comedy.  But  this  change  was  quantita- 
tive as  well  as  qualitative.  In  the  prehistrionic  period  the 
chorus  and  its  coryphaeus,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  monop- 
olized every  line.  After  Thespis  had  brought  in  the  first  actor 
the  chorus  yielded  but  a  small  place  to  its  rival.  Even  in  the 
two-actor  period  in  our  earliest  extant  play,  the  Suppliants, 
the  chorus  sang  five  hundred  and  sixty-five  verses  out  of  a  total 
of  a  thousand  and  seventy-four,  and  in  addition  to  this  the 
coryphaeus  spoke  ninety  verses.  In  six  of  Aeschylus'  seven 
extant  pieces  the  choral  element  varies  from  three-fifths  to  about 
one-half  of  the  whole  play.  The  Prometheus,  for  special  reasons, 
is  exceptional,  the  fraction  being  only  one-sixth.  The  effect 
of  the  third  actor  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  in  Sophocles  the  propor- 
tion varies  from  one-fourth  to  one-seventh  and  in  Euripides  from 
one-fourth  to  one-eighth. 

The  question  naturally  arises,  Why  were  the  Greek  dramatists 
so  slow  in  increasing  the  number  of  actors?  This  was  due 
partly  to  a  paucity  of  histrionic  talent  and  partly  to  difl&culty 
in  mastering  the  dramatic  technique  of  the  dialogue. 

In  the  dithyramb  and  the  prehistrionic  drama  the  poet  was 
his  own  coryphaeus.  Accordingly  when  Thespis  introduced  the 
first  actor  he  served  in  that  capacity  himself,  appointing  another 
as  coryphaeus.  So  did  Phrynichus,  Aeschylus,  and  the  other 
dramatists  of  that  period.  Since  there  were  then  no  retired 
actors  and  no  opportunity  to  serve  an  apprenticeship,  it  is 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ACTORS  169 

obvious  that  these  early  poets  had  to  teach  themselves  how  to 
'  act.  At  this  stage  it  was  not  possible  for  anyone  except  a  play- 
wright to  become  an  actor,  and  actors  must  have  been  corre- 
spondingly scarce.  The  situation  improved  somewhat  after 
Aeschylus  introduced  the  second  actor,  for  though  the  poets  still 
carried  the  major  roles  it  now  became  possible  for  men  with 
natural  histrionic  ability  to  develop  it  and  gain  experience  in 
minor  parts.  By  the  time  of  Sophocles,  actors  had  become  so 
plentiful,  relatively  speaking,  that  he  could  increase  the  number 
employed  by  each  poet  from  two  to  three  and  could  retire  from 
personal  participation  in  the  pubHc  presentation  of  his  works. 
His  weak  voice  is  said  to  have  been  responsible  for  this  second 
innovation;  but  he  occasionally  appeared  in  scenes  where  this 
weakness  was  no  great  hindrance,  e.g.,  as  a  harp  player  in 
Tharnyris  and  as  an  expert  ball  player  in  Nausicaa.  By  449  B.C. 
the  profession  was  so  large  and  its  standing  so  well  recognized 
that  a  contest  of  tragic  actors  was  made  an  annual  event  in  the 
program  of  the  City  Dionysia,  This  course  of  development 
reveals  one  reason  for  the  long  duration  of  the  one-  and  two-actor 
stages  in  Greek  drama. 

We  shall  now  pass  to  the  second  reason.  In  the  prehistrionic 
period  a  series  of  lyric  questions  and  answers  between  chorus  and 
cor3^haeus  was  the  nearest  approach  to  a  dialogue  that  was 
possible  (see  p.  10,  above).  With  the  invention  of  the  first 
actor  this  interplay  of  question  and  answer,  still  lyrical  in  form, 
could  be  carried  on  by  the  actor  and  the  chorus  (including  the 
coryphaeus).  Such  a  duet,  which  came  to  be  known  as  a 
commus,  continued  in  use,  especially  for  dirges,  as  long  as  the  ^ 
chorus  lasted.  Side  by  side  with  this,  however,  there  quickly 
developed  a  non-lyric  interchange  of  spoken  Unes  between  actor 
and  coryphaeus.  But  not  until  the  second  actor  was  added  did 
true  dialogue  in  the  modern  sense  become  possible.  Yet  the 
poets  could  not  at  once  make  full  use  of  even  these  simple 
resources.  Our  analysis  of  Aeschylus'  Suppliants  (pp.  163  f., 
above)  shows  that  in  two  instances  Danaus  stood  silent  and  unad- 
dressed  during  a  conversation  between  the  other  actor  and  the 


I70  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

coryphaeus.  Moreover,  priority  of  usage  constrained  the  play- 
wrights to  give  the  actor-coryphaeus  dialogue  precedence  over 
actor-actor  dialogue  (cf .  pp.  165  f.,  above) .  They  seemed  unable 
to  weld  the  two  types  together  with  a  technique  which  would 
employ  all  three  persons  at  once.  In  the  three-actor  period  the 
embarrassment  of  riches  made  their  helplessness  the  more 
striking.  "A"  might  engage  in  a  dialogue  with  "B"  while 
"C"  remained  inactive;  then  with  ''C"  while  "B"  was  silent; 
and  finally  "B"  and  ''C"  might  converse,  with  "A"  remaining 
passive.  Often  the  transitions  are  marked  or  the  longer  speeches 
set  off  by  a  few  more  or  less  perfunctory  verses  (usually  two) 
spoken  by  the  coryphaeus.  The  type  is  not  frequently  worked 
out  as  completely  as  I  have  just  indicated,  but  the  principle  is 
illustrated  on  a  lesser  scale  in  almost  every  play.  Compare,  for 
example,  Euripides'  Helen,  vss.  1 186-1300,  and  Andromache, 
vss.  547-766.  Such  an  arrangement,  needless  to  say,  falls  far 
short  of  a  genuine  trialogue  or  tetralogue.  Yet  we  must  not  be 
unfair  in  condemning  this  practice.  The  Greek  poets  were 
feeling  their  way  and  could  not  immediately  attain  to  every 
refinement.  Even  in  Shakespeare  and  the  modern  drama, 
despite  centuries  of  continuous  experimentation  and  the  numer- 
ous examples  of  superior  technique,  the  tandem  arrangement  of 
dialogue  is  still  not  uncommon. 

A  half-step  in  advance  consisted  in  the  silent  actor  interrupt- 
ing the  dialogue  with  some  electrifying  utterance.  For  example, 
in  Aeschylus'  Libation-Bearers  (458  B.C.),  Clytemnestra's  appeal 
to  Orestes  on  the  score  of  her  motherhood  stays  his  hand  in  the 
very  act  of  murdering  her,  and  he  weakly  turns  to  his  trusted 
friend,  Pylades,  for  guidance.     The  latter's  ringing  response, 

Wilt  thou  abjure  half  Loxias'  behest, 
The  word  of  Pytho,  and  thy  sacred  troth  ? 
Hold  all  the  world  thy  foe  rather  than  Heaven 
[vss.  900-903,  Warr's  translation], 

is  as  effective  as  if  uttered  by  the  god  in  person,  and  urges  Orestes 
on  to  the  deadly  deed.  These  are  the  only  words  that  Pylades 
utters  in  the  whole  tragedy.     In  another  play  belonging  to  the 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ACTORS  17 1 

same  trilogy,  the  Eumenides,  Aeschylus  rose  to  the  full  possi- 
bilities of  his  histrionic  resources — Orestes,  the  coryphaeus, 
Apollo,  and  Athena  all  participating  in  the  conversation  between 
vss.  746  ajid  753.  Similarly,  in  Sophocles'  Oedipus  at  Colonus, 
Antigone,  Oedipus,  Ismene,  and  the  coryphaeus  all  speak  between 
vss.  494  and  506,  and  in  Euripides'  Suppliants  the  herald,  the 
coryphaeus,  Adrastus,  and  Theseus  divide  four  lines  among 
them  (vss.  510-13).  But  after  all,  such  instances  are  compara- 
tively rare  and  seldom  extend  over  a  very  long  passage. 

In  contradistinction  to  tragicvpractice  Aristophanes  in  the 
last  quarter  of  the  fifth  century  enmloyed  not  merely  three  but 
occasionally  even  four  comic  actork^in  ensemble  scenes.  For 
example,  in  the  Lysistrata,  vss.  78-246,  Calonice,  Myrrhina, 
Lysistrata,  and  Lampito  engage  in  a  running  fire  of  conversation 
quite  in  the  modern  manner.  Again,  in  the  Frogs,  vss.  141 1  ff., 
Dionysus,  Aeschylus,  Euripides,  and  Pluto  all  have  speaking 
parts,  although  the  last  two  do  not  address  one  another.  In  the 
same  play  (vs.  555)  Dionysus  utters  three  words  while  three  other 
participants  in  the  dialogue  are  present.  Under  similar  circum- 
stances Pseudartabus  interposes  two  verses  (100  and  104)  in  the 
Acharnians,  and  Triballus  parts  of  five  verses  (1615,  1628  f.,  and 
1678  f.)  in  the  Birds.  In  these  passages  the  comic  coryphaei 
have  no  speaking  parts.  Trialogues  are  not  so  rare  in  Old 
Comedy  as  to  justify  an  enumeration  of  the  instances,  and  they 
are  sometimes  embelhshed  by  the  participation  of  the  coryphaei. 
Nevertheless,  the  old  tandem  arrangement  is  still  the  more 
common  one  when  three  characters  are  present. 

We  thus  pass  from  one  problem  to  another:  Why  this  dis- 
parity between  the  technique  of  tragedy  and  comedy?  Must 
"we  suppose  that  the  comic  dramatists  were  more  clever  artists 
than  their  tragic  confreres  ?  By  no  means.  Comedy  was  more 
mobile  and  reacted  more  quickly  to  the  actual  conditions  of 
contemporaneous  life;  tragedy  was  more  conventional,  never 
could  free  itself  entirely  from  the  power  of  tradition,  and  could 
only  slowly  modify  that  tradition.  The  situation  is  clearly 
revealed  in  the  field  of  meter.     In  the  iambic  trimeters  written 


172  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

by  Aeschylus  a  trisyllabic  substitution  (tribrach,  anapaest,  or 
dactyl)  for  the  pure  disyllabic  iambus  occurs  only  once  in  about 
twenty-five  verses.  In  the  earliest  plays  of  Euripides  such 
resolutions  appear  once  in  sixteen  verses  but  gradually  increase 
to  a  maximum  of  one  in  every  alternate  verse.'  On  the  contrary, 
in  the  comedies  of  Aristophanes  they  are  found  in  almost  every 
line.  Now  we  are  not  to  suppose  that  Euripides  required  a 
hfetime  in  order  to  learn  how  to  use  resolutions  with  freedom  or 
that  he  was  never  able  to  gain  the  facility  of  Aristophanes.  Nor 
are  we  to  suppose  that  Sophocles,  whose  iambics  resemble  those 
of  Aeschylus,  was  never  able  to  master  this  expedient.  In  both 
cases  we  see  merely  the  power  which  convention  and  tradition 
exercised  over  tragedy.  And  the  same  influences  made  them- 
selves felt  in  the  comparatively  archaic  technique  of  tragic 
dialogue  and  tended  to  keep  the  tragic  playwrights  from  making 
full  use  of  their  resources. 

But  were  the  resources  of  the  tragic  writers  as  great  as  those 
of  the  comedians?  We  have  seen  how  the  first,  second,  and 
third  actors  were  added  to  Greek  tragedy.  Is  there  reason  to 
believe  that  the  tragedians  of  Athens  ever  followed  the  comedians 
in  employing  a  larger  number  ?  Until  recently  a  negative  reply 
to  this  has  been  accepted  without  serious  question,  but  in  1908 
Professor  Rees  challenged  the  tradition.  Three  years  later  the 
old  view  was  defended  by  Dr.  Kaffenberger.  Although  neither 
has  been  able  fully  to  establish  his  contentions,  yet  the  discussion 
has  helped  to  clear  the  air,  defined  the  issues  more  sharply,  and 
really  settled  certain  important  points.  For  one  thing,  since 
1844  it  has  generally  been  taken  for  granted  that  three  actors 
were  the  maximum  for  Old  Comedy  as  well  as  for  tragedy.  But 
the  passages  just  cited  from  Aristophanes  would  seem  to  be 
decisive  against  this  view,  and  all  the  objections  to  the  presenta- 
tion of  Greek  tragedy  by  only  three  actors  apply  with  still 
greater  force  to  Old  Comedy.  Even  Dr.  Kaffenberger  {op.  ciL, 
pp.  9  f.)  accepts  this  conclusion,  and  it  is  an  invaluable  result 
of  Professor  Rees's  investigations  that  he  has  banished  this  phase 

'  Cf.  Tanner,  Transactions  of  American  Philological  Association,  XLYl  (1915), 
185-87.     For  Sophocles,  cf.  Jebb's  Electra,  p.  Ivii. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ACTORS  173 

of  the  subject  from  the  field  of  controversy.  Moreover,  they  are 
both  agreed^  that  a  fourth  actor  seems  sometimes  to  be  required 
also  for  New  Comedy.  It  must  be  added,  however,  that  Dr.  Graf 
{op.  cit.,  pp.  29  ff.)  dissents.  But  in  any  case  the  question  has 
been  restricted,  so  far  as  the  fifth  century  is  concerned,  to  the 
practice  in  tragedy. 

It  can  be  said  at  once  that  if  we  are  willing  to  grant  that  the 
Greeks  made  use  of  certain  desperate  expedients  it  is  physically 
possible  to  stage  all  the  extant  tragedies  with  three  actors.  But 
these  expedients  are  so  offensive  to  modern  feeling  as  to  be 
tolerable  only  as  a  last  resort.  It  will  be  best  to  begin  at  a  point 
where  comparative  agreement  is  possible,  viz.,  with  Aeschylus' 
earlier  plays,  which  nearly  everyone  would  admit  were  intended 
for  two  actors  alone.  Do  they  reveal  any  indication  of  this 
limitation  ? 

In  the  analysis  of  Aeschylus'  Suppliants  on  p.  164,  the  reader 
will  remember  that  Danaus,  having  declared  "I  will  return  with 
helpers  and  defenders,"  took  his  departure  at  vs.  775;  after  an 
ode,  the  suitors'  herald  arrived  on  the  scene  (vs.  836)  but  was 
balked  by  the  entrance  of  the  Argive  king  (vs.  907).  One  would 
surely  expect  Danaus  to  accompany  the  king,  but  as  a  matter 
of  fact  he  does  not  reappear  until  vs.  980.  The  reason  for  this  is 
plain — Danaus  and  the  herald  are  played  by  the  same  actor,  and 
consequently  the  former  can  return  only  after  the  latter 's 
departure  at  vs.  953.  Moreover,  Aeschylus  sought  to  gloss  over 
the  blemish  by  having  Danaus  refer  in  advance  to  the  possibility 
of  his  being  slow  in  spreading  the  alarm  (vs.  730)  and  by  having 
the  chorus  request  the  king  to  send  their  father  back  to  them 
(vss.  968  ff.),  as  if  his  absence  had  been  perfectly  natural.  This 
incident  teaches  us  four  things:  (i)  A  single  actor  could  carry 
several  roles;  the  simplicity  and  sameness  of  ancient  costumes 
and  the  ease  of  slipping  them  off  and  on,  together  with  the  use  of 
masks  by  the  actors,  made  this  practice  more  feasible  than  it  is 
with  us.  Overzealous  classicists  have  not  merely  asked  us  to 
tolerate  this  practice  but  even  to  admire  its  results.     Thus, 

'  Cf.  Rees,  Classical  Philology,  V  (1910),  291  ff.,  and  Kaffenberger,  op.  cit., 
p.  10. 


174  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

when  one  character  returns  to  report  the  death  of  another  the 
spectators  are  supposed  to  have  been  doubly  moved  if  they  could 
penetrate  the  messenger's  disguise  and  from  the  identity  of 
stature,  build,  and  voice  recognize  the  ghost,  as  it  were,  of  the 
departed  visibly  before  them  (!)/  (2)  This  practice  oftentimes 
necessitated  the  arbitrary  withdrawal  of  a  character  from  the  scene 
of  action  and  his  enforced  absence  when  he  would  naturally  be 
present.  (3)  By  inventing  an  inner  reason  for  this  the  poet  strove 
to  conceal  or  gloss  over  his  yielding  to  external  need.  (4)  The 
intervals  between  the  withdrawal  of  Danaus  and  the  entrance  of 
the  herald  (vss.  776-836)  and  vice  versa  (vss.  953-80)  afford  an 
inkling  as  to  the  length  of  time  required  for  such  shifts  in  roles. 
Further  information  is  derived  from  Aeschylus'  Prometheus 
Bound  (see  pp.  166  f .,  above).  (5)  Supernumeraries  may  be  em- 
ployed for  silent  parts,  e.g.,  that  of  Bia.  (6)  A  part  may  be  divided 
between  a  lay  figure  and  an  actor,  as  in  the  case  of  Prometheus 
himself.  From  the  nature  of  things,  this  expedient  would  not 
be  frequently  employed;  but  an  analogous  device  (6a)  is 
common,  viz.,  to  give  the  silent  portions  of  a  role  to  a  mute  and 
the  speaking  portions  to  an  actor.  (7)  The  stubborn  silence  of 
the  mutes  and  supernumeraries  employed  according  to  principles 
(5)  and  {6a)  is  sometimes  extremely  embarrassing  and  difi&cult  to 
motivate.  (4a)  The  interval  required  for  a  ''lightning"  change 
from  one  character  to  another  was  much  shorter  than  the 
Suppliants  led  us  to  suppose.  Six  verses  and  a  slight  pause  in 
the  action  enabled  the  actor  impersonating  Hephaestus  to  with- 
draw by  the  side  entrance  after  vs.  81  and  to  get  in  position  to 
speak  from  behind  the  wooden  figure  of  Prometheus  at  vs.  88. 
This  conclusion  is  confirmed  by  certain  evidence  in  Plautus' 
translation  of  Greek  comedies,  which  indicates  that  about  thir- 
teen lines  would  suffice.^ 

'  Cf.  C.  F.  Hermann,  De  Distributione  Personarum  inter  Histriones  in  Tra- 
goediis  Graecis  (1840),  pp.  32-34. 

'  Cf.  Prescott,  "Three  Puer-Scenes  in  Plautus  and  the  Distribution  of  Roles," 
Harvard  Studies,  XXI  (1910),  44.  It  ought  to  be  added  that  some  authorities  deny 
that  Prometheus  was  represented  by  a  dummy,  believing  that  this  tragedy  belonged 
to  the  three-actor  period  (see  further,  p.  228,  below). 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ACTORS  175 

Still  other  principles  are  derivable  from  Aeschylus'  Persians. 
The  ghost  of  Darius  having  requested  his  widow  to  meet  their 
son  Xerxes  with  a  change  of  raiment,  Atossa  replies  (vss.  849  ff.) : 
"I  shall  endeavor  to  meet  my  son  ....  and,"  turning  to  the 
chorus,  *'if  he  comes  hither  before  me,  do  you  comfort  him  and 
escort  him  to  his  palace."  These  words  are  clearly  intended  to 
prepare  us  for  her  failure  to  appear  in  the  denouement,  and  in 
fact  she  does  not  appear.  But  since  one  of  the  two  actors  is 
disengaged  in  the  final  scene,  at  first  glance  there  seems  to  be  no 
external  reason  for  her  absence.  It  is  evident  that  Aeschylus 
valued  the  parts  of  Atossa  and  Xerxes  so  highly  that  he  wanted 
them  both  played  by  the  better  of  his  two  actors,  the  protagonist. 
If  Atossa  had  appeared  with  her  son,  she  must  have  been  imper- 
sonated by  a  different  actor  than  in  the  opening  scenes.  The 
poet  preferred  to  sacrifice  verisimilitude  somewhat  rather  than 
to  "split"  Atossa's  role  in  this  fashion.  Hence,  we  must  con- 
clude (8)  that  at  any  cost  star  parts  were  reserved  for  the  leading 
actor,  (9)  that  split  roles  were  to  be  avoided,  and  (10)  that 
sometimes  for  purely  technical  reasons  the  dramatist  would 
unnaturally  keep  a  character  off  the  stage  entirely  in  certain 
scenes. 

If  we  could  be  sure  that  the  final  scene  of  Aeschylus'  Seven 
against  Thebes  is  genuine,  it  would  be  possible  to  deduce  a  final 
principle.  The  main  support  for  the  charge  of  interpolation  is 
that  this  scene  in  a  two-actor  play  apparently^  requires  three 
actors.  From  vs.  961  to  vs.  1004  Antigone  and  Ismene  engage 
in  a  lyric  duet;  at  vs.  1005  a  herald  enters  and  converses  with' 
Antigone.  From  this  scene,  which  I  am  inclined  to  accept  as 
genuine  (see  p.  283,  below),  we  must  concede  either  that  a  super- 
numerary could  occasionally  bear  a  brief  singing  (or  speaking) 
part  or  preferably  that  the  herald,  standing  in  the  side  entrance 
concealed  from  the  spectators  and  already  dressed  for  his  own 
role,  sang  Ismene's  share  of  the  duet  while  a  mute  went  through 
the  dumb  show  of  her  part  before  the  audience;  at  the  conclusion 
of  the  duet  he  promptly  appeared  in  propria  persona.  Though 
the  latter  alternative  is  offensive  to  present-day  taste,  it  is  not 


176  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

unparalleled  in  the  annals  of  the  modern  stage/  In  any  case 
one  of  these  alternatives  is  the  last  principle  (11)  to  be  drawn 
from  the  two-actor  drama. 

Now  these  eleven  principles  are  so  manifestly  operative  in  the 
other  Greek  tragedies  as  to  raise  an  irresistible  presumption  that 
some  restriction  (to  three  or  at  most  to  four  actors)  applied  also 
to  them.  It  would  obviously  be  out  of  place  to  pass  every  play 
in  review  here;  I  must  content  myself  with  a  few  typical  illustra- 
tions and  then  consider  the  crucial  cases. 

In  order  to  avenge  his  daughter,  Menelaus  is  on  the  point  of 
murdering  her  rival  (Andromache)  and  the  latter's  son  when  he 
is  interrupted  by  the  arrival  of  Peleus,  Hermione's  father-in-law. 
There  is  no  reason  why  Menelaus  should  fear  the  old  man's 
blusterings;  nevertheless  he  suddenly  leaves  Hermione  in  the 
lurch  and  takes  his  departure  with  the  words : 

Now,  seeing  that  my  leisure  serveth  not, 
Home  will  I  go;  for  not  from  Sparta  far 
Some  certain  town  there  is,  our  friend,  time  was, 
But  now  our  foe:  against  her  will  I  march, 
Leading  mine  host,  and  bow  her  'neath  my  sway. 
Soon  as  things  there  be  ordered  to  my  mind, 
I  will  return,  etc. 

[Euripides  Andromache,  vss.  732  ff.,  Way's  translation] 

Surely  no  excuse  was  ever  less  convincing  than  this !  No  wonder 
Professor  Verrall's  ingenuity  has  built  up  a  whole  reinterpretation 
of  the  play  around  it.^  The  real  reason  for  the  sudden  leave- 
taking  is  only  too  apparent — Orestes  is  presently  to  make  his 
appearance  (vs.  881)  and  Menelaus'  actor  is  required  for  his 
role.    This  exempHfies  principles  (i),  (2),  and  (3). 

Again,  in  Sophocles'  Maidens  of  Trachis,  Lichas,  Deianira,  and 
a  messenger  are  on  the  scene  when  Deianira  spies  lole  in  a 
throng  of  captives  and  questions  her  (vss.  307  ff.).  lole  makes 
no  reply  whatsoever.  Lichas  explains  her  refusal  to  answer  by 
stating  that  from  grief  and  weeping  she  has  not  uttered  a  word 

'  Cf.  Lewes,  Life  of  Goethe'^,  p.  424, 

»  Cf.  Four  Plays  of  Euripides  (1905),  pp.  i  ff. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ACTORS  177 

since  leaving  her  fatherland  (vss.  3225.).  Since  the  three  actors 
are  already  occupied  in  this  scene  it  is  evident  that  lole  is  played 
by  a  mute  and  cannot  speak.  This  illustrates  principles  (5) 
and  (7). 

Still  again,  up  to  vs.~  1245  of  Euripides'  Orestes,  when  he 
enters  the  palace,  Pylades  speaks  freely.  At  vs.  1554  Menelaus, 
Orestes,  Hermione,  and  Pylades  enter  the  scene.  The  last  two 
are  now  played  by  mutes,  the  third  actor  appearing  as  Apollo  at 
vs.  1625.  Orestes  threatens  to  kill  Hermione;  and  after  vainly 
striving  to  deter  him  Menelaus  turns  to  Pylades  with  the  query 
(vs.  1591):  "Do  you,  also,  share  in  this  murder,  Pylades?" 
What  is  a  mute  to  do  under  such  circumstances  ?  Orestes 
relieved  the  situation  by  saying:  ''His  silence  gives  consent; 
my  word  will  suffice."  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  play- 
wright intended  Menelaus'  question  to  create  the  illusion  that 
Pylades  could  have  spoken  had  he  so  desired,  principles  {6a) 
and  (7). 

Euripides  avoided  an  awkward  silence  of  this  sort  in  the  Ion 
by  leaving  Xuthus  unrepresented  in  the  final  scene,  where  the 
three  actors  speak  in  other  roles.  Xuthus  takes  his  final  depar- 
ture at  vs.  675,  intending  to  celebrate  for  his  new-found  son  a 
pubHc  feast  from  which  the  host  himself  is  most  strangely 
absent.  The  poet  prepares  us  in  advance  for  this  contingency 
by  means  of  Xuthus'  words  to  his  son,  as  reported  by  a  servant 
at  vss.  ii3ofif.:  "If  I  tarry  in  sacrificing  to  the  Birth-gods,"  a 
thin  pretext,  "place  the  feast  before  the  friends  assembled  there, " 
principles  (i),  (2),  (3),  and  (10). 

Finally,  for  the  presentation  of  his  Phoenician  Maids,  Eurip- 
ides must  have  had  a  leading  actor  of  great  musical  attain- 
ments. For  such  a  performer  the  roles  of  Jocaste  and  Antigone 
were  especially  adapted,  and  he  seems  to  have  played  them  both, 
principle  (8).  The  piece  opens  with  a  soliloquy  by  Jocaste, 
who  withdraws  at  vs.  87.  Immediately  a  servant  appears  on 
the  palace  roof  and  tells  Antigone  to  tarry  upon  the  stairs  until 
he  can  assure  himself  that  there  is  no  one  near  to  see  her  and  to 
spread  scandalous  reports  of  her  indiscretion.     Thus,  Antigone's 


178  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

appearance  is  delayed  for  fifteen  verses  (vss.  88-102),  which  is 
sufficient  to  enable  Jocaste's  actor  to  shift  to  the  new  role, 
principle  (4a).  The  protagonist  continues  to  play  both  parts 
without  difficulty,  except  at  vss.  1 264  ff .  Here  Jocaste  summons 
her  daughter  from  the  palace  and  both  are  present  during  vss. 
1270-82,  the  latter  speaking  some  six  verses.  Obviously  Antig- 
one's lines  in  this  brief  scene  must  have  been  delivered  by  one  of 
the  subordinate  players,  though  such  splitting  of  a  role  violates 
Aeschylean  practice,  see  principle  (9).  Perhaps  the  procedure 
in  this  case  was  condoned  by  the  fact  that  Antigone's  part 
previously  and  (for  the  most  part)  subsequently  was  entirely 
lyric,  while  her  few  words  here  are  in  plain  iambics.  The  dif- 
ference between  the  singing  and  the  speaking  voice  would  help 
to  conceal  the  temporary  substitution  of  another  actor.  It  is 
true  that  by  assigning  Jocaste's  and  Antigone's  roles  to  different 
actors  throughout  it  is  possible  to  distribute  the  parts  in  this 
play  among  three  actors  without  any  difficulty  whatever.  But 
this  would  require  us  to  ignore  the  peculiar  technique  of  the 
opening  scenes,  the  true  inwardness  of  which  was  recognized  by 
ancient  commentators.^ 

These  examples  are  by  no  means  exhaustive,  but  it  is  high 
time  that  we  turn  to  the  passages  which  are  of  crucial  importance 
to  the  three-actor  theory.  In  Aeschylus'  Libation-Bearers  a 
servant  has  just  informed  Clytemnestra  that  her  paramour  is 
slain,  and  she  cries  out:  "Let  some  one  quickly  give  me  an  ax 
to  slay  a  man  withal"  (vs.  889).  We  are  to  suppose  that  the 
slave  at  once  makes  his  exit  to  comply  with  her  command. 
She  speaks  two  lines  more  and  Orestes  enters.  They  divide 
seven  more  lines  between  them,  and  Orestes'  purpose  is  beginning 
to  waver  when  he  catches  sight  of  Pylades  entering  and  asks: 
*'Py lades,  what  shall  I  do  ?  Shrink  from  killing  my  mother  ?" 
Pylades'  electrifying  response  has  already  been  quoted  (vss. 
900-902;  see  p.  170,  above).  Here  we  have  four  speaking  char- 
acters between  vss.  886  and  900  and  consequently  four  actors, 
unless  the  servant  can  be  transformed  into  Pylades  within  the 

'  Cf.  the  scholium  on  vs.  93. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ACTORS  179 

space  of  nine  lines,  vss.  891-99.  This  would  be  a  "lightning" 
change  indeed  (4a),  and  it  is  not  surprising  that  it  has  been 
challenged.  Yet  the  ancient  scholiast  accepts  it  and  I  do  not 
believe  we  are  warranted  in  pronouncing  it  impossible,  especially 
since  the  shift  is  merely  from  one  male  character  to  another. 

Another  sort  of  difficulty  is  presented  by  Euripides'  Androm- 
ache. Menelaus,  Andromache,  and  her  son,  Molossus,  all  have 
speaking  (or  singing)  parts  just  before  the  entrance  of  Peleus 
at  vs.  547.  Since  none  of  the  earlier  speakers  has  withdrawn 
and  since  Peleus  at  once  begins  to  talk,  it  would  seem  at  first 
glance  that  we  had  four  actors  indisputably  before  us.  Not 
so,  answer  the  defenders  of  the  traditional  view,  for  it  is  sig- 
nificant that  Molossus  becomes  utterly  dumb  after  Peleus  enters. 
Therefore  we  are  asked  to  believe  that  Molossus  was  played  by 
a  mute  throughout,  and  the  actor  who  is  presently  to  appear  as 
Peleus  deUvered  from  behind  the  scenes  the  words  which  belong 
to  Molossus,  the  mute  furnishing  only  the  gestures.  We  have 
already  found  support  for  this  kind  of  thing  in  a  suspected  scene 
,  of  Aeschylus'  Seven  against  Thebes,  principle  (11),  second  alterna- 
tive (pp.  175  f.).  But  we  are  asked  to  go  further  and  beheve  that 
this  was  always  the  practice  when  children  seemed  to  sing  or 
speak  upon  the  Greek  stage;*  and  in  confirmation  of  this  it  is 
pointed  out  that  whenever  children  have  a  part,  as  in  Euripides' 
Alcestis,  vss.  393  ff.  and  Medea,  vss.  1271  ff.,  one  of  the  actors  is 
always  off  the  scene  and  available  for  this  purpose.  The  most 
difficult  example  of  this  problem  has  recently  come  to  light  in  the 
fragments  of  Euripides'  Hypsipyle,  vss.  1579  £f.^  The  heroine 
and  Amphiaraus  converse  from  the  beginning  of  the  fragment  to 
vs.  1589,  where  the  latter  makes  his  exit.  Two  lines  of  farewell 
(vss.  1590  f.)  are  addressed  to  him  and  are  assigned  by  the 
papyrus  to  "the  children  of  Hypsipyle."  Moreover,  they  are 
of  such  a  nature  that  one  line  must  have  been  spoken  by  each 
of  the  two  youths.  Next,  one  of  them  converses  with  his  mother 
until  Thoas,  who  also  has  a  speaking  part,  appears  at  vs.  1632. 

'  Cf.  Devrient,  Das  Khid  auf  der  antiken  Biihne  (1904). 
'  Cf.  Oxyrhynchus  Papyri,  VI  (1908),  69. 


iSo 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


Here,  then,  if  the  children's  parts  are  taken  by  actors  we  have 
four  actors  required  in  two  successive  scenes.  The  only  alter- 
native Hes  in  supposing  that  mutes  impersonated  the  boys  and 
that  Thoas'  actor,  already  dressed  for  his  introit  at  vs.  1632, 
spoke  their  Hnes  from  behind  the  scenes.     This  would  include 


Fig.  67. — Distribution  of  Roles  to  Actors  in  Sophocles'  Oedipus  at  Colonus 

twelve  lines  for  one  youth  and  one  line,  in  a  different  voice,  for 
the  other. 

But  the  most  intractable  play  of  all  is  Sophocles'  Oedipus  at 
Colonus.  Antigone  and  Oedipus  are  on  the  stage  continuously 
for  the  first  eight  hundred  and  forty-seven  verses  (the  latter  until 
vs.  1555)^  while  the  third  actor  appears  successively  as  a  stranger, 
Ismene,  Theseus,  and  Creon  (Fig.  67).  So  far  there  is  no  diffi- 
culty; but  at  this  point  Creon  hopes  to  bring  Oedipus  to  time 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ACTORS  l8l 

by  announcing  that  his  guards  have  already  seized  Ismene  (oflF- 
scene)  and  by  having  them  now  drag  Antigone  away.  Creon 
threatens  to  carry  off  Oedipus  as  well,  but  at  vs.  887  Theseus 
reappears  and  prevents  further  outrage.  Note,  however,  that 
if  only  three  actors  were  available  Theseus  must  now  be  imper- 
sonated by  Antigone's  actor,  whereas  previously  he  was  repre- 
sented by  the  actor  who  is  now  playing  Creon 's  part.  Such 
spHtting  of  a  role  is  directly  contrary  to  Aeschylean  practice, 
principle  (9) ,  and  has  not  in  this  instance  the  justification  which 
Euripides  had  for  splitting  Antigone's  part  in  the  Phoenician 
Maids  (p.  1 78,  above) .  For  Theseus'  second  actor  participates  in 
the  dialogue  more  extensively  than  did  hers  and  his  lines  are 
prose  throughout,  while  hers  were  entirely  prose  for  one  actor 
and  (almost)  entirely  lyric  for  the  other.  But  there  are  still  other 
obstacles  ahead.  At  vs.  1043  Creon  and  Theseus  withdraw; 
after  a  choral  ode  Antigone,  Theseus,  and  Ismene  rejoin  Oedipus 
(vs.  1099).  Inasmuch  as  Ismene  now  has  no  speaking  part  she 
is  evidently  played  by  a  mute,  principle  (6a) .  Presumably  the 
other  two  are  represented  by  the  same  actors  as  at  the  begin- 
ning, although  this  second  transfer  in  Theseus*  role  doubles  the 
chances  of  the  audience  noticing  the  shift.  The  only  alternative, 
however,  is  to  split  also  Antigone's  role  at  this  point.  Theseus 
retires  at  vs.  12 10  and  reappears  at  vs.  1500,  his  actor  having 
impersonated  Polynices  in  the  interval  (vss.  1 254-1446).  At 
vs.  1555  all  the  characters  exeunt.  In  the  final  act  a  messenger 
is  on  the  stage  from  vs.  1578  to  vs.  1669.  Since  Antigone  and 
Ismene  enter  immediately  thereafter  (vs.  1670),  it  is  necessary 
to  suppose  that  they  are  played  by  the  same  actors  as  at  the 
beginning  and  that  Oedipus  has  become  the  messenger.  At  vs. 
175 1  Theseus  makes  his  final  entrance,  represented  this  time  by 
Oedipus'  actor,  so  that  this  important  role  is  played  in  turn  by 
each  of  the  three  actors!  This  means  splitting  Theseus'  role 
twice.  It  is  also  possible  to  split  his  role  and  Ismene's  (or 
Antigone's)  once  each,  or  to  split  his  role  once  and  to  have  the 
final  actor  in  this  part  sing  from  behind  the  scenes  the  few 
words  which  fall  to  Ismene  just  before  Theseus'  last  entrance, 


l82  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

principle  (i  i).  On  the  other  hand,  though  a  fourth  actor  would 
obviate  all  these  difficulties  we  should  then  have  no  explanation 
for  the  complicated  system  of  entrances  and  exits  and  for  the 
strange  silence  of  Ismene  during  vss.  1099-1555,  especially 
during  vss.  1457-99  (see  p.  187,  below). 

I  do  not  consider  it  warrantable  to  draw  a  categorical  con- 
clusion from  the  data  considered  in  the  last  fifteen  paragraphs. 
But  in  my  opinion  the  technique  of  almost  every  tragedy  is 
explicable  only  on  the  assumption  that  the  regular  actors  were 
restricted  to  three;  and,  as  I  stated  at  the  beginning,  it  is 
physically  possible  to  stage  every  play  with  that  number.  In  the 
case  of  a  few  pieces,  however,  this  limitation  imposes  practices 
which  so  outrage  the  modern  aesthetic  sense  that  we  instinctively 
long  for  some  manner  of  escape.  According  to  late  and  unreli- 
able evidence  an  extra  performer  was  called  a  parachoregema. 
This  name  would  indicate  that  he  was  an  extra  expense  to  the 
man  who  financed  each  poet's  plays  (the  choregus,  see  pp.  186 
and  27of.,  below),  and  consequently  that  his  employment  would 
be  determined  by  the  wealth  or  liberality  of  the  latter.  But 
whether  it  was  in  fact  possible  for  the  tragic  playwrights  occa- 
sionally to  have  the  services  of  such  an  extra,  and,  if  so,  under 
what  conditions  and  how,  are  questions  which  in  the  present 
state  of  our  knowledge  can  receive  only  hypothetical  answers. 
It  must  be  recognized,  however,  that  the  paucity  of  actors  in  the 
early  days  resulted,  as  we  have  just  seen,  in  conventions  of 
staging  which  perhaps  were  afterward  accepted  as  part  of  the 
tradition,  however  unnecessary  they  may  in  the  meanwhile  have 
become.  The  technique  of  composition  also  makes  it  clear  in 
my  opinion  that  extra  performers,  if  such  were  in  fact  engaged, 
were  not  on  a  par  with  the  other  three  nor  employed  freely 
throughout  the  whole  play  but  merely  recited  or  sang  a  very 
few  lines  at  those  crises  in  the  dramatic  economy  which  were 
occasioned  by  the  limitation  in  the  number  of  regular  actors. 

We  have  now  discovered  why  the  dialogue  technique  of  I 
tragedy  was  more  restricted  than  that  of  comedy,  but  there  still 
remains  a  further  question.     Why  was  the  number  of  actors  in 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ACTORS  183 

tragedy  usually  or  always  restricted  to  three,  while  four  actors/ 
were  not  uncommon  in  comedy  ?  So  long  as  the  poets  did  theic 
own  acting,  there  was  no  occasion  for  the  state  to  interfere  in  the 
selection  of  actors.  And  this  situation  would  naturally  continue 
for  some  time  after  the  plays  were  presented  largely  or  wholly 
by  actors  alone — the  poets  would  still  have  the  matter  in  their 
charge.  In  fact  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  state 
interposed  its  authority  before  the  establishment  of  the  contest 
for  tragic  actors  at  the  City  Dionysia  in  449  B.C.  This  supposi- 
tion affords  the  best  explanation  for  certain  ancient  notices. 
For  example,  Aeschylus  is  said  to  have  used  Cleander  as  his  first 
actor  and  afterward  to  have  associated  Mynniscus  with  him,  and 
Sophocles  to  have  employed  Tlepolemus  continuously.  What- 
ever truth  or  error  may  lie  back  of  these  statements  they  imply 
that  in  the  first  half  of  the  fifth  century  the  choice  of  actors  rested 
solely  with  the  poets.  The  same  implication  is  inherent  in  the 
fact  that  the  second  and  third  actors  were  introduced  by  Aeschy- 
lus and  Sophocles  respectively.  The  poets  must  have  made 
these  additions  upon  their  own  initiative.  For  the  state  could 
not  have  shown  partiahty  by  providing  Sophocles,  for  example, 
with  more  actors  than  were  furnished  the  other  dramatists  in 
the  same  contest;  and  if  they  were  all  alike  given  an  increased 
number,  there  would  be  no  reason  for  crediting  any  one  of  them 
with  the  innovation.  The  state  must  have  assumed  supervision 
of  the  histrionic  features  of  the  dramatic  contests  at  the  same 
time  that  it  estabhshed  a  prize  for  actors,  viz.,  in  449  B.C.  And 
since  the  tragedies  of  this  period  were  presented  by  three  actors, 
this  number  became  crystallized,  and  so  was  never  thereafter,  so 
far  as  the  state  was  concerned,  exceeded  in  tragedy.  Tragedies 
were  added  to  the  Lenaean  program  and  a  prize  for  tragic  actors 
estabhshed  for  that  festival  simultaneously,  about  433  B.C. 
Naturally  the  conventional  number  of  tragic  actors  would  be 
transferred  from  the  older  contest  to  the  newer.  In  comedy, 
however,  the  development  and  tradition  were  entirely  different 
(see  pp.  52  f.,  above).  Primitive  comedies  in  Attica  were 
performed  by  a  double  chorus  of  choreutae,  who  constituted  an 


1 84  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

undifferentiated  crowd  and  assumed  no  individual  roles,  but 
sang  (or  spoke)  singly,  antiphonally,  or  in  unison.  Shortly 
before  450  B.C.  regular  actors  were  introduced  in  contradistinc- 
tion to  the  choreutae;  and  Cratinus,  imitating  contemporaneous 
tragedy,  set  their  number  at  three.  Yet  the  choreutae  did  not 
for  a  long  time  entirely  give  up  their  old  license  and  self- 
assertiveness.  Consequently,  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  number 
of  performers  did  not  remain  at  the  tragic  norm.  The  fact  that 
a  contest  of  comic  actors  was  not  estabHshed  at  the  Lenaea  until 
about  442  B.C.  (at  the  City  Dionysia  not  until  about  325  B.C.) 
allowed  a  slight  interval  for  this  reaction  to  assert  itself  before 
usage  became  legalized.  Such,  then,  are  the  reasons  for  the 
number  of  actors  being  less  restricted  in  comedy  than  in  tragedy. 
For  about  a  century,  beginning  with  449  B.C.,  the  state 
annually  engaged  three  tragic  protagonists  to  be  assigned  by  lot 
to  the  three  poets  who  were  about  to  compete  with  plays.  Each 
protagonist  seems  to  have  hired  his  own  subordinate  actors 
(deuteragonist  and  tritagonist)  and  with  their  assistance  pre- 
sented all  the  plays  (at  the  City  Dionysia  three  tragedies  and  one 
satyric  drama)  which  his  poet  had  composed  for  the  occasion. 
The  victorious  actor  in  each  year's  contest  was  automatically 
entitled  to  appear  the  following  year.  The  other  two  protago- 
nists were  perhaps  selected  by  means  of  a  preliminary  contest, 
such  as  is  mentioned  for  comic  actors  on  the  last  day  of  the 
Anthesteria.  These  regulations  applied,  mutatis  mutandis,  also 
to  the  contest  of  comic  actors  and  to  the  tragic  and  comic  con- 
tests at  the  Lenaea.  Thus  at  the  Lenaea  of  418  B.C.  Calhppides 
acted  in  the  two  tragedies  of  Calhstratus,  and  Lysicrates  in  the 
other  dramatist's  two  plays.  And  it  should  be  noted  that, 
whereas  Callippides  won  the  prize  for  acting,  Callistratus  was 
defeated  in  the  competition  of  tragedies.  This  must  have  been 
a  point  of  considerable  difficulty,  for  an  actor's  chances  must  have 
been  greatly  hampered  by  his  being  required  to  present  a  poor 
series  of  plays;  and  a  poet,  likewise,  must  have  suffered  by  reason 
of  an  inferior  presentation  of  his  dramas.  But  sometime  in  the 
fourth  century,  when  the  playwrights  were  no  longer  required 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ACTORS  185 

to  write  satyr-plays  (see  p.  199,  below),  a  more  equitable  system 
was  introduced.  Each  of  the  protagonists  in  turn  now  acted  one 
of  the  three  tragedies  of  each  poet,  the  histrionic  talent  at  the 
disposal  of  each  dramatist  being  thus  made  exactly  the  same. 
For  example,  at  the  City  Dionysia  of  341  B.C.  (Fig.  76)  Astyd- 
amas  was  the  victorious  playwright;  his  Achilles  was  played 
by  Thettalus,  his  Athamas  by  Neoptolemus,  and  his  Antigone  by 
Athenodorus.  The  same  actors  likewise  presented  the  three 
tragedies  of  Evaretus  and  those  of  the  third  dramatist.  On  this 
occasion  Neoptolemus  won;  a  year  later,  under  similar  condi- 
tions, he  was  defeated  by  Thettalus. 

We  have  seen  how  slow  was  the  rise  of  actors  into  a  profession 
distinct  from  the  poets.  At  a  later  time,  however,  they  were 
strongly  organized  into  guilds  under  the  name  of  "Dionysiac 
artists"  (ol  aix^yl  tov  Alovvctoi'  rexJ^trat).  Their  strongest  "union  " 
{koivov  or  awoSos)  was  centered  at  Athens  and  it  was  also  the 
earliest  (fourth  century  B.C.).  Others  were  situated  at  Thebes, 
Argos,  Teos,  Ptolemais,  Cyprus,  and  in  all  parts  of  the  Greek- 
speaking  world.  Now  already  in  the  fifth  century  traveling 
troupes  had  presented  at  the  country  festivals  plays  which  had 
won  popular  acclaim  in  Athens.  For  economic  reasons  it  was 
to  the  advantage  both  of  the  players  who  had  to  divide  their 
emoluments  and  of  the  communities  which  hired  them  to  make 
these  traveling  companies  as  small  as  possible  and  consequently 
to  restrict  their  repertoire  to  plays  capable  of  being  performed  by 
a  minimum  of  actors.  With  the  organization  of  guilds  the 
presentation  of  dramas  "in  the  provinces"  or  even  at  important 
festivals  would  be  taken  over  by  them;  and  the  same  economic 
causes  as  before  would  operate  to  restrict  the  number  of  players 
in  a  company.  There  is  reason  to  believe  that  a  normal  troupe 
in  the  time  of  the  technitae  consisted  of  three  actors.^  Inscrip- 
tions for  the  Soteric  festival  at  Delphi  for  the  years  272-269  B.C. 
inclusive  contain  the  names  of  ten  companies  of  tragic  actors 
and  twelve  of  comic  actors.  These  performers  belonged  to  the 
Athenian  guild  and  in  every  case  there  are  three  names  to  a 

'  Cf.  Rees,  American  Journal  of  Philology,  XXXI  (1910),  43  ff. 


1 86  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

company.  There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  this  number  was 
customary  also  in  the  wandering  troupes  of  the  pre-technitae 
period.  Some  maintain  that  already  in  the  fifth  century  a  fourth 
actor  was  called  a  parachoregema,  as  being  an  extra  burden  upon 
the  choregus  (cf.  p.  182,  above).  But  Professor  Rees  has  made  it 
seem  very  probable  that  the  term  took  its  rise  in  the  time  of  the 
technitae.  For  in  later  usage  choregein  {xop'ny^lv)  in  most  cases 
no  longer  meant  "to  defray  the  expense  of  the  chorus,"  "to  act 
as  choregus,"  but  simply  "to  furnish"  without  any  reference  to 
the  choregic  system  at  all.  Parachoregema,  therefore,  would 
signify  "that  which  is  furnished  in  supplement,"  "an  extra." 
In  other  words,  if  the  officials  of  a  city  contracted  with  the  union 
for  one  or  more  troupes  for  a  dramatic  festival  they  would  be 
provided  with  three-actor  companies;  but  if  they  desired  to 
witness  some  four-actor  play  or  to  avoid  the  infeUcities  arising 
from  the  splitting  or  ill-assorted  doubling  of  roles  (see  pp.  191  f., 
below)  they  might  at  extra  expense  secure  a  parachoregema  in 
the  form  of  a  fourth  actor  and  so  gratify  their  wishes.  According 
to  either  interpretation,  therefore,  the  term  may  refer,  inter  alia, 
to  a  fourth  actor,  but  there  is  a  wide  difference  as  to  the  theory  of 
the  circumstances  and  situation  which  produced  this  meaning. 
Since  our  extant  plays  belong  exclusively  to  the  fifth  and 
fourth  centuries,  the  size  of  the  troupes  furnished  by  the  guilds 
could  have  exerted  no  influence  upon  them.  But  it  is  quite 
possible  that  the  dramatists  of  later  times  deliberately  adapted 
their  technique  to  the  needs  of  subsequent  presentation  by  such 
companies.  For  example,  the  number  of  characters  who  can 
have  a  speaking  part  in  a  dialogue  naturally  cannot  exceed  the 
number  of  actors  at  the  poet's  disposal.  Whatever  may  have 
been  the  situation  previously,  in  the  technitae  period  this  would 
be  three.  Therefore  if  the  technitae  did  not  give  rise  to,  they  at 
least  fixed  the  so-called  aesthetic  law  that  if  a  fourth  character  is 
present  at  a  conversation  between  three  others  he  must  keep 
silent.  This  rule  is  expressed  by  Horace^  in  the  words:  "Let 
no  fourth  character  strive  to  speak,"  and  it  is  often  mentioned  by 

»  Cf.  Horace  Ars  Poetica,  vs.  192;  see  also  p.  53,  n.  i,  above. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ACTORS  187 

writers  of  the  Alexandrian  and  Roman  periods.  The  scholiasts 
belong  to  this  time  and  their  comments  frequently  reveal  an 
attempt  to  foist  the  aesthetic  law  upon  the  fifth-century  dramas. 
The  difficulty  which  the  fifth-century  writers  encountered  in 
mastering  even  the  three-part  dialogue  (see  p.  170)  lends  to 
such  an  attempt  a  misleading  facility.  In  tragedy  the  normal 
restriction  of  actors  to  three  makes  the  task  especially  easy,  but 
even  here  the  law  is  only  superficially  observed.  For  the  cory- 
phaeus often  participates  so  freely  in  a  conversation  between 
actors  (see  pp.  164 f.  and  1 69 f.,  above)  that  only  by  courtesy  can 
it  be  called  a  three-part  dialogue.  In  Seneca's  Roman  tragedies, 
on  the  contrary,  the  coryphaeus  never  speaks  if  more  than  one 
actor  is  present.^  Now  Professor  Rees  would  trace  the  aesthetic 
law  back  to  fifth-century  times,  but  Dr.  Kaffenberger  {op.  ciL, 
pp.  2  2  f .)  rightly  demurs.  He  points  out  that  in  Sophocles'  Oedipus 
at  Colonus,  vss.  1099-1555,  Oedipus,  Antigone,  and  Ismene  are 
continuously  present  but  that  Ismene  says  never  a  word.  What 
is  the  cause  of  this  silence?  During  vss.  1099-12 10  and  vss. 
1500-1555  Theseus  is  also  present  and  during  vss.  1 249-1446 
Polynices  is  present.  In  these  scenes,  therefore,  it  is  possible  to 
explain  Ismene's  silence  on  the  basis  of  the  aesthetic  law.  But 
during  vss.  1447-99  Oedipus  and  his  two  daughters  are  left  alone, 
and  Ismene  still  remains  silent.  Consequently  the  aesthetic 
explanation  breaks  down  at  this  point  and  we  must  stand  by  our 
earlier  conclusion  (see  pp.  181  f.,  above)  that  throughout  these 
scenes  Ismene  is  impersonated  by  a  mute.  Moreover,  since 
Oedipus  forbids  his  daughters  sharing  his  final  moments  with 
him,  why  does  the  poet  not  let  him  take  leave  of  them  on  the 
stage  instead  of  resorting  to  a  messenger's  narrative  (cf.  vss. 
i6iiff.)?  The  answer  is  obvious.  In  such  a  situation  Ismene 
simply  must  have  spoken  and  this  a  mute  could  not  have  done  for 
her.  Moreover,  there  is  no  aesthetic  reason  why  the  law  should 
not  be  as  binding  in  comedy  as  in  tragedy.  Nevertheless,  fifth- 
century  comedies  indisputably  violated  it  and  possibly  fourth- 
century  comedies  did  also  (see  pp.  17 1-73,  above).     Therefore,  if 

'  Cf.  Leo,  Rheinisches  Museum  filr  Philologie,  LII  (1897),  513. 


i88  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

tragedy  was  more  scrupulous  it  must  have  been  because  its 
actors  were  less  numerous.  But  in  truth  it  was  not  until  the 
period  of  the  technitae  and  their  three-actor  troupes  that  a  hard- 
and-fast  rule  was  estabHshed.  Notwithstanding,  the  gram- 
marians as  a  result  of  their  closet  study  of  Attic  drama  seized 
upon  the  observance  of  the  law  in  fifth-century  tragedy  and 
usually  in  New  Comedy,  which  was  greatly  influenced  by 
Euripides,  as  a  justification  for  tracing  the  practice  back  to  an 
earlier  origin.  Except  in  one  scene  Seneca  always  observed  the 
law.^  But  when  Plautus  and  Terence  attempted  to  transplant 
New  Comedy  to  Itahan  soil,  they  encountered  a  difficulty.  It 
was  the  use  of  masks  which  enabled  the  Greek  playwrights  to 
shift  their  actors  from  one  role  to  another  with  lightning  speed. 
But  masks  are  said  not  to  have  been  employed  on  the  Roman 
stage  until  the  next  century.  Therefore,  even  if  the  Greek 
comedies  had  been  translated  without  modification  it  would 
have  been  quite  impossible  to  present  them  at  Rome  with  only 
three  or  four  (maskless)  actors.  Accordingly,  Plautus  and 
Terence  seem  to  have  employed  five  or  six  performers  and 
occasionally  even  more,  and  then  proceeded  to  make  further  use 
of  them  so  as  to  gratify  the  Roman  desire  for  spectacular  effects. 
By  combining  Greek  plays  into  one  Latin  version  (by  "con- 
taminating" them,  to  use  the  technical  term)  and  by  altering 
them  freely  they  produced  many  scenes  in  which  four  or  five 
persons  participate  in  the  same  dialogue. 

The  fact  that  women's  parts  in  EUzabethan  drama  were 
played  by  boys  has  been  used  to  explain  the  fondness  of  Eliza- 
bethan heroines  for  masquerading  in  mascuhne  attire.  Now  the 
Greek  theater,  likewise,  knew  no  actresses — all  parts,  regardless 
of  sex,  were  presented  by  men.  Can  any  effect  of  this  practice 
be  traced  in  the  extant  plays  ?  First,  Greek  drama  also  was 
not  unacquainted  with  the  spectacle  of  masculine  performers 
impersonating  women  disguised  as  men  or  vice  versa;  cf. 
the  role  of  Mnesilochus  in  Aristophanes'  Women  at  the  Thes- 
mophoria,  and  the  chorus  and  several  characters  in  the  same 

*  Cf.  Seneca's  Agamemnon,  vss.  981  ff. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ACTORS  189 

author's  Women  in  Council.  But  in  the  Greek  theater  this 
occurrence  was  too  rare  to  be  significant.  Secondly,  it  has 
frequently  been  observed  that  the  heroines  of  Greek  tragedy  are 
as  a  rule  lacking  in  feminine  tenderness  and  diffidence  and  are 
prone  to  such  masculine  traits  as  boldness,  initiative,  and  self- 
reliance.  On  the  other  hand  the  women  who  have  speaking 
parts  in  comedy  are  usually  either  impaired  in  reputation  or 
disagreeable  in  character — courtesans,  ravished  maidens,  shrews, 
scolds,  jealous  wives,  intriguing  mothers-in-law,  etc.^  Now  these 
facts  are  doubtless  the  resultant  of  many  factors.  For  example, 
tragedy  has  little  direct  use  for  the  modest  violet  type  of  woman, 
and  the  sharp  demarcation  between  dramatic  genres  (seep.  201, 
below)  tended  to  prevent  their  indirect  employment  in  scenes 
meant  merely  to  relieve  the  tragic  intensity  of  the  main  plot. 
Likewise,  social  conditions  must  have  had  a  great  deal  to  do  with 
the  exclusion  of  women  of  unblemished  reputation  and  attractive 
years  from  the  comic  stage  (see  pp.  277-79,  below).  Nevertheless 
when  all  is  said  I  consider  it  quite  possible  that  the  representation 
of  women  by  men  actors  was  partially  responsible  for  such  a 
choice  and  for  the  dehneation  of  female  roles.  At  least  male 
performers  must  have  found  such  types  of  women  much  easier 
to  impersonate.  Finally,  if  children  were  represented  only  in  pan- 
tomime and  their  words  spoken  by  a  grown  actor  from  behind  the 
scenes  (see  pp.  179  f.,  above)  we  can  understand  why  girls  never 
have  a  speaking  part  and  one  reason  why  the  words  put  in  boys' 
mouths  are  often  too  old  for  them.  A  competent  critic  has 
declared:  "Euripides'  children  do  not  sing  what  is  appropriate  to 
children  in  the  circumstances  supposed  but  what  the  poet  felt  for 
the  children  and  for  the  situations.  In  particular  the  song  of  the 
boy  over  the  dead  body  of  his  mother  in  the  Alcestis  is  one  of  his 
grossest  errors  in  dehneation.  "^  This  situation,  also,  is  capable  of 
several  explanations,  but  who  will  deny  that  the  practice  of 
having  children's  parts  declaimed  by  adults  belongs  among  them  ? 

'  Cf.  Lounsbury,  Shakespeare  as  a  Dramatic  Artist,  pp.  iii  f. 

'  Cf.  U.  von  Wilamowitz-Mollendorff,  Herakles',  I,  119,  note,  and  Euripides' 
Alcestis,  vss.  393  ff. 


IQO  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

In  France  the  court  compelled  actors  to  furnish  amusement 
and  the  church  damned  them  for  complying.  In  Rome  the 
actors  were  slaves  or  freedmen  and  belonged  to  the  dregs  of 
society.  Only  in  Greece  did  no  stigma  rest  upon  the  histrionic 
profession.  As  we  have  seen  (pp.  13 if.,  above)  the  actors  were 
active  participants  in  a  religious  service  and  during  the  festival 
performances  their  persons  were  quasi-sacrosanct.  As  such,  they 
were  entitled  to  and  received  the  highest  respect,  and  their 
occupation  was  considered  an  honorable  one.  Consequently, 
they  were  often  the  confidants  and  associates  of  royalty  and 
wielded  no  mean  influence  in  the  poKtics  of  their  native  lands. 
In  particular  as  they  traveled  from  court  to  court  they  often 
acted  as  intermediaries  in  diplomatic  negotiations.  Thus 
Aeschines,  an  ex-actor,  was  almost  as  influential  in  the  Athenian 
faction  which  favored  the  Macedonians  as  was  Demosthenes  in 
that  which  opposed  them.  And  though  the  latter  in  his  speeches 
indulged  in  frequent  sneers  at  Aeschines'  theatrical  career,  this 
was  not  on  account  of  his  profession  per  se  but  because  Demos- 
thenes claimed  he  had  been  a  failure  at  it.  Aeschines  and  Aris- 
todemus,  another  actor,  twice  went  as  ambassadors  from  Athens 
to  Philip,  king  of  Macedonia,  with  whom  the  latter  was  persona 
gratissima.  Thettalus  was  an  especial  favorite  of  Alexander  the 
Great,  who  sent  him  as  an  emissary  to  arrange  his  marriage  with 
a  Carian  satrap's  daughter.  When  Thettalus  was  defeated  by 
Athenodorus  at  Tyre  in  332  B.C.  Alexander  said  that  he  would 
rather  have  lost  a  part  of  his  kingdom  than  to  have  seen  Thettalus 
defeated.  These  men  were  contemporaries  of  Aristotle,  who 
declared  in  his  Rhetoric  that  in  his  day  actors  counted  for  more 
in  the  dramatic  contests  than  the  poets. ^  The  huge  fees  that 
they  received  are  often  mentioned.  In  view  of  all  this  it  is  not 
surprising  that  they  arrogated  to  themselves  many  hberties. 
Aristotle  states  that  Theodorus  always  insisted  upon  being  the 
first  actor  to  appear  in  a  play,  doubtless  on  a  principle  analagous 
to  that  which  Mr.  William  Archer^'  mentions:    ''Where  it  is 

^  Cf.  Aristotle's  Rhetoric  1403633,  quoted  as  the  motto  of  this  chapter. 
'  Cf .  Play-making,  p.  1 29. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ACTORS  191 

desired  to  give  to  one  character  a  special  prominence  and  pre- 
dominance, it  ought,  if  possible,  to  be  the  first  figure  on  which 

the  eye  of  the  audience  falls The  solitary  entrance  of 

Richard  III  throws  his  figure  into  a  relief  which  could  by  no 
other  means  have  been  attained."  This  anecdote  may  mean 
merely  that  Theodorus  assumed  the  role  of  the  first  character, 
however  insignificant,  in  order  to  appear  first  upon  the  scene. 
But  some  have  thought  that  he  actually  had  the  plays  modified 
so  that  the  character  which  he  was  to  enact  might  appear  first. 
Even  upon  the  first  hypothesis,  however,  slight  alterations  might 
sometimes  have  been  necessary.  For  example,  if  he  wished  to 
impersonate  Antigone  in  such  a  play  as  Euripides'  Phoenician 
Maids  and  if  no  passage  were  provided  Hke  vss.  88-102  to  enable 
the  actor  to  shift  from  Jocaste,  who  opens  the  tragedy,  to  Anti- 
gone (see  pp.  177  f.,  above),  then  perhaps  the  simplest  solution 
would  have  been  to  interpolate  a  few  such  lines  for  this  purpose. 
But  however  this  may  have  been  in  Theodorus'  case  there  can 
be  little  doubt  that  the  actors  did  sometimes  take  such  liberties 
with  their  dramatic  vehicles.  To  correct  this  abuse  Lycurgus, 
who  was  finance  minister  of  Athens  in  the  last  third  of  the  fourth 
century  B.C.  and  "completed"  the  theater  (see  p.  69,  above),  is 
said  to  have  had  state  copies  of  old  plays  provided  from  which 
the  actors  were  not  allowed  to  deviate;  and  Lycon  was  fined  ten 
talents,  which  Alexander  paid,  for  having  interpolated  one  line 
in  a  comedy. 

Naturally  most  actors  were  peculiarly  adapted  to  certain 
types  of  characters.  Thus  Nicostratus  was  most  successful  as  a 
messenger,  Theodorus  in  female  roles,  etc.  The  interesting 
significance  of  the  parts  borne  by  Apollogenes,  an  actor  of  the 
third  century,  has  only  recently  been  recognized.  At  Argos  he 
impersonated  Heracles  and  Alexander,  at  Delphi,  Heracles  and 
Antaeus,  at  Dodona,  Achilles,  etc.,  in  addition  to  winning  a 
victory  in  boxing  at  Alexandria.  Evidently  this  actor  was  a 
pugiHst  for  whom  roles  and  plays  were  carefully  chosen  which 
would  display  his  physique  and  strength  to  the  best  advantage. 
Now  these  special  predilections  and  accomplishments  of  the 


192  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

actors,  as  well  as  their  physical  quahties,  must  often  have  run 
afoul  of  the  constant  doubhng  and  the  occasional  splitting  of 
roles  as  required  by  the  restricted  number  of  players.  Professor 
Rees  makes  good  use  of  such  points  in  arguing  against  the  three- 
actor  limitation  in  fifth-century  tragedy/  But  in  such  matters 
custom  is  all-important;  we  cannot  be  sure  to  what  extent  the 
Greeks  were  offended  by  infelicities  of  this  nature.  In  my 
opinion  such  considerations  are  not  strong  enough  to  break  down 
the  arguments  drawn  from  dramatic  technique  (see  pp.  173-82, 
above). 

I  ought  not  to  conclude  this  chapter  without  a  few  words 
concerning  the  manner  in  which  act  divisions  arose  from  the 
alternation  of  choral  odes  and  histrionic  passages  in  ancient 
drama.  The  earliest  tragedies,  such  as  Aeschylus'  Suppliants 
and  Persians,  began  with  the  entrance  song  of  the  chorus,  which 
is  called  the  parodus.  In  later  plays  it  was  customary  for  one 
or  more  actors  to  appear  before  the  choral  parodus  in  a  so-called 
prologue.  The  first  instance  of  this  which  is  known  to  us 
occurred  in  Phrynichus'  Phoenician  Women  (476  B.C.).  After 
the  parodus  came  an  alternation  of  histrionic  scenes  {episodes) 
and  choral  odes  (stasima),  concluding  with  a  histrionic  exodus. 
These  are  nontechnical  definitions  and  do  not  cover  every  varia- 
tion from  type,  but  they  will  suffice  for  present  purposes.  Thus 
Aeschylus'  Prometheus  Bound  falls  into  the  following  divisions: 
prologue,  vss.  1-127;  parodus,  vss.  128-92;  first  episode,  vss. 
193-396;  first  stasimon,  vss.  397-435;  second  episode,  vss.  436- 
525;  second  stasimon,  vss.  526-60;  third  episode,  vss.  561- 
886;  third  stasimon,  vss.  887-906;  exodus,  vss.  907-1093. 
Though  the  number  of  stasima  (and  of  episodes)  was  more 
usually  three,  as  in  this  case,  there  was  originally  no  hard-and- 
fast  rule  on  the  subject.  In  several  plays  there  were  four  stasima 
and  four  episodes,  and  in  Sophocles'  Antigone  five  of  each. 
Therefore  in  a  normal  tragedy  like  the  Prometheus  the  number  of 
histrionic  divisions  would  be  five — prologue,  three  episodes,  and 
exodus.    In  the  early  plays  which  had  no  prologue  the  histrionic 

'  Cf .  The  So-called  Rule  of  Three  Actors  in  the  Classical  Greek  Drama,  pp.  45-60. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ACTORS  193 

divisions  fell  to  four — three  episodes  and  an  exodus.  In  several 
of  the  later  plays,  on  the  other  hand,  they  rose  to  six,  and  in  the 
Antigone  to  seven.  As  the  lack  of  connection  between  chorus 
and  plot  increased  and  the  size  and  importance  of  choral  odes 
diminished  (see  pp.  126  f.,  136-49,  and  168,  above)  there  was  the 
more  excuse  for  ignoring  the  choral  elements  and  for  concen- 
trating attention  upon  the  histrionic  divisions.  The  develop- 
ment of  comedy  led  to  similar  results.  The  composition  of  an 
Old  Comedy  has  already  been  discussed  (see  pp.  40  f.,  above). 
So  long  as  the  agon  and  the  parabasis  persisted,  the  structural 
differences  between  tragedy  and  comedy  were  unmistakable; 
but  with  the  disappearance  of  these  features  early  in  the  fourth 
century  (see  pp.  42  f.,  above)  the  assimilation  of  the  two  genres 
rapidly  proceeded.  Moreover,  as  the  activity  of  the  comic 
chorus  was  confined  to  entr'actes  and  as  their  entertainment 
became  so  foreign  to  the  plot  as  no  longer  to  be  written  in  the 
manuscripts  but  merely  to  be  indicated  by  XOPOT  (see  pp.  147  f.), 
this  tendency  to  ignore  the  choral  element  in  favor  of  the  his- 
trionic became  pronounced.  Now  the  number  of  histrionic 
divisions  in  Old  Comedy  and  in  New  Comedy  was  limited  to 
five  even  less  frequently  than  in  tragedy.  And  in  either  literary 
genre  there  was  no  more  reason  for  such  a  restriction,  whether  on 
historical  or  technical  grounds,  than  there  would  be  in  modern 
drama.  In  every  period  such  a  detail  depends,  or  ought  to  be 
left  to  depend,  entirely  upon  the  requirements  of  the  story 
chosen  for  dramatic  presentation.  Nevertheless,  since  the  his- 
trionic divisions  in  tragedy  were  more  usually  five  and  since 
comedy  fell  more  and  more  under  the  domination  of  tragedy, 
the  rigid  principle  was  at  last  set  up  for  both  tragedy  and  comedy 
that  each  play  should  contain  five  acts,  no  more,  no  less;  cf. 
Horace's  pronunciamento :  ''Let  a  play  neither  fall  short  of  nor 
extend  beyond  a  fifth  act." 

It  should  be  observed,  however,  that  our  English  word  "act" 
conveys  a  misleading  impression  in  this  connection.  The  Greek 
word  was  simply  "part"  (nepos)  and  denoted  merely  a  division 
of  the  play  as  determined  by  choral  divertissement,  whether 


194  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

written  or  interpolated.  These  "parts,"  therefore,  depended 
upon  the  more  or  less  accidental  and  haphazard  activity  of  the 
chorus  and  often  two  or  three  of  them  would  be  required  to  make 
up  an  act  in  the  modern  sense.  In  other  words  the  modern 
notion  of  an  act  as  an  integral  part  of  the  story,  marking  a 
definite  stage  in  the  unfolding  of  the  plot,  was  for  the  most  part 
yet  to  be  developed,  especially  in  comedy. 

The  leveling  effect  of  the  five-act  rule  is  seen  in  the  modern 
editions  of  Plautus  and  Terence.  It  is  certain  that  neither  four 
nor  any  other  fixed  number  of  pauses  was  employed  at  the 
premier  performances  of  these  dramatists'  works.  In  some  cases 
they  seem  to  have  been  given  continuous  representation  with 
neither  choral  intermezzi  nor  pauses  at  the  points  where  the 
Greek  originals  had  had  entr^actes.  From  this,  however,  we 
must  not  infer  that  Plautus  and  Terence  did  not  know  where  the 
acts  or  the  ''parts"  began  and  closed.  If  for  no  other  reason,  the 
recurrence  of  XOPOT  in  at  least  most  of  the  Greek  comedies 
which  they  were  translating  and  adapting  would  not  have 
permitted  them  to  be  ignorant  on  this  point,  for  in  my  opinion, 
so  far  as  pauses  were  inserted  in  the  Roman  performances,  they 
coincided  with  the  corresponding  points  of  division  in  the  Greek 
plays.  But  by  this  I  do  not  mean  that  the  Latin  divisions  were 
always  as  numerous  as  the  Greek;  in  my  judgment,  owing  to 
contamination  and  other  modifying  influences  they  were  uni- 
formly fewer.  Moreover,  when  these  comedies  were  first 
published  for  the  use  of  a  reading  public,  it  seems  that  the 
manuscripts  contained  no  indication  of  act  divisions.  Within 
a  century  of  Terence's  death,  however,  partisans  of  the  five-act 
dogma  were  already  attempting  to  force  their  Procrustean  theory 
upon  his  works.  A  later  effort  of  this  sort  is  preserved  to  us  in 
the  commentary  of  Donatus  (fourth  century  a.d.)  and  passed 
into  the  printed  editions,  with  some  modifications,  about 
1496  A.D.  Likewise,  the  Renaissance  scholars,  obsessed  by  the 
tradition  of  what  had  come  to  be  considered  an  inviolable  law , 
proceeded  to  divide  each  of  Plautus'  twenty  plays  into  five  acts; 
of.  Pius'  edition  of  1500  a.d.     The  divisions  in  both  poets  rest 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ACTORS  19S 

upon  no  adequate  authority  and  are  easily  shown  to  be  incorrect. 
Yet,  unfortunately,  it  is  now  impossible  to  re-establish  the  acts 
as  known  to  their  Latin  authors.  If  we  revert  to  the  Greek 
terminology,  however,  somewhat  more  definite  results  may  be 
obtained,  though,  even  so,  agreement  is  not  possible  in  every 
case.  Technical  criteria  now  at  our  disposal  would  indicate 
that  the  original  "parts"  {iieprj)  in  these  comedies  ranged  from 
a  minimum  of  two  or  three  to  a  maximum  of  seven  or  eight. 


But  Aristophanes  was  at  the  same 
time  a  dramatist  contending  for  a  prize, 
and  had  no  wish  to  alienate  the  greater 
part  of  his  audience.— T.  G.  Tucker. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  INFLUENCE  OF  FESTIVAL  ARRANGEMENTS^ 

We  have  already  seen  that  the  performance  of  plays  at 
Athens  was  confined  to  two  festivals  of  Dionysus,  and  the  time 
when  the  various  dramatic  genres  began  to  be  presented  at  each 
has  been  stated  (see  pp.  iigf.,  above).  Since  the  Lenaea  came 
at  the  end  of  January  (Gamelion),  when  navigation  was  not  yet 
considered  entirely  safe,  few  strangers  were  present;  and  in 
consequence  this  festival  became  more  private  and  intimate, 
more  like  a  family  gathering  of  the  Athenians  by  themselves. 
On  the  contrary  the  City  Dionysia  took  place  toward  the  end 
of  March  (Elaphebolion),  when  the  allies  were  accustomed  to 
send  their  tribute  to  Athens  and  the  city  was  crowded  with 
visitors  from  all  parts  of  the  Greek  world.  As  a  result  this 
occasion  was  more  cosmopoKtan  than  the  other,  and  every  effort 
was  expended  to  make  it  as  splendid  as  possible.  All  this 
explains  an  episode  in  the  life  of  Aristophanes.  At  the  City 
Dionysia  of  the  year  426  B.C.  was  produced  his  Babylonians,  in 
which  he  represented  the  Athenian  state  as  a  mill  where  the  allies 
suffered  from  the  tyrannous  exactions  of  Cleon,  its  manager. 
Cleon  accordingly  lodged  with  the  senate  an  information 
(ela-a77eXta)  charging  lese  majeste,  aggravated  by  being  com- 
mitted in  the  presence  of  strangers  {irapovTcov  tcjp  ^evccv) .  There- 
fore, in  his  next  play,  the  Acharnians,  produced  at  the  Lenaea 
of  425  B.C.,  Aristophanes  prefaced  some  frank  expressions  of 
opinion  with  the  following  statement:  "And  what  I  shall  say 
will  be  dreadful  but  just,  for  Cleon  will  not  be  able  now  to  malign 

'  In  addition  to  the  works  mentioned  on  pp.  xvii  and  xx  f.,  above,  cf.  A.  T.  Mui- 
Tay , On  Parody  and  Paratragoediain  Aristophanes  (1891);  Mazon,  "Sur  le  Proag6n," 
Revue  de  Philologie,  XXVII  (1903),  263  ff.;  Rees,  "The  Significance  of  the  Parodoi 
in  the  Greek  Theater,"  American  Journal  of  Philology,  XXXII  (1911),  377  ff.; 
Graeber,  De  Poetarum  AUicorum  Arte  Scaenica  (191 1);  Robert,  Die  Masken  der 
neueren  attischen  Komodie  (191 1);  and  the  bibliography  listed  on  p.  31S,  below. 

196 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  FESTIVAL  ARRANGEMENTS  197 

me  for  defaming  the  state  to  alien  ears.  For  we  are  alone ;  this 
is  the  Lenaea,  and  the  aliens  are  not  yet  here,  nor  the  tribute  from 
the  federated  states,  nor  our  allies;  but  we  are  alone  now.'"^ 
Similarly,  Demosthenes  tried  to  make  Midias'  assault  upon  him 
at  the  City  Dionysia  of  350  B.C.  seem  more  heinous  by  pointing 
out  that  it  was  committed  "in  the  presence  of  many,  both  strangers 
and  citizens."^ 

Since  we  have  no  exact  information  as  to  when  the  City 
Dionysia  began  or  ended,  we  are  in  doubt  as  to  its  duration.^ 
But  it  is  probable  that  it  lasted  for  six  days,  certainly  five.  The 
first  day  was  occupied  with  the  procession,  as  already  described 
(see  pp.  121  f.,  above).  The  second  day,  and  possibly  the  third, 
was  devoted  to  dithyrambs,  the  literary  type  from  which  tragedy 
had  sprung.  There  were  five  choruses  of  boys  and  five  of  men, 
each  of  the  ten  tribes  annually  standing  sponsor  for  one  chorus. 
We  happen  to  know  that  the  contest  of  men  was  added  to  this 
festival  in  508  B.C.  Inasmuch  as  each  chorus  consisted  of  fifty 
amateur  performers,  it  will  be  seen  that  no  inconsiderable  por- 
tion of  the  free  population  received  every  year  a  musical  training 
which  could  not  but  enhance  their  appreciation  of  the  choral  and 
lyrical  parts  of  the  dramas  and  likewise  improve  the  quaHty  of  the 
material  from  which  the  dramatic  choruses  were  chosen. 

The  last  three  days  of  the  festival  seem  to  have  been  given" 
over  to  the  dramatic  performances,  but  just  what  the  arrange- 
ments were  is  not  known.  In  Aristophanes'  Birds,  vss.  786  ff., 
the  chorus,  praising  the  use  of  wings,  remarks  that  "if  one  of  you 
spectators  were  so  provided  and  became  wearied  with  the  tragic 
choruses,  he  might  fly  away  home  and  dine  and  then  fly  back 
again  to  us."  From  this  passage  it  has  been  plausibly  concluded 
that  the  comedies  came  later  in  the  day  than  the  tragedies.  It 
would  seem  as  if  the  three  tragic  playwrights  must  have  produced 

^  Cf.  Acharnians,  vss.  501  ff.,  Starkie's  edition,  excursus  V,  and  Croiset, 
Aristophanes  and  the  Political  Parties  at  Athens,  pp.  42  ff.  (Loeb's  translation). 

*  Cf.  Demosthenes'  Against  Midias,  §  74. 

3  It  probably  began  upon  the  tenth  day  of  Elaphebolion  (cf.  Adams,  Trans- 
actions of  American  Philological  Association,  XLI  [1910],  60  ff.)  and  closed  on  the 
fifteenth. 


198  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

their  plays  on  as  many  successive  mornings,  the  comedies  fol- 
lowing later  each  day  in  similar  rotation. 

It  is  well  known  that  at  the  City  Dionysia  each  of  three 
tragic  poets  brought  out  four  plays  in  a  series,  three  tragedies 
and  one  satyric  drama  (see  pp.  23  f.,  above).  Such  a  group  was 
termed  a  didascalia  ("teaching")-  It  was  Aeschylus'  frequent 
practice  to  have  all  four  plays  treat  different  aspects  of  the  same 
general  theme,  the  levity  of  the  concluding  piece  counterbalan- 
cing somewhat  the  seriousness  of  the  three  tragedies.  In  that 
case  the  set  of  four  was  called  a  tetralogy;  but  if  the  satyric 
drama  dealt  with  a  different  topic  than  the  tragedies,  the  latter 
were  said  to  form  a  trilogy.  No  tetralogy  or  didascalia  is  extant 
and  only  one  trilogy,  the  Agamemnon,  Libation-Bearers,  and 
Eumenides,  which  Aeschylus  brought  out  in  458  B.C.  The  satyric 
drama  in  this  series  is  not  preserved  but  was  entitled  Proteus. 
It  may  have  dealt  with  the  shipwreck  of  Menelaus,  Agamemnon's 
brother,  on  his  return  from  Troy.  After  Aeschylus  the  four 
pieces  in  a  didascalia  were  usually  unrelated  in  subject. 

According  to  canonical  doctrine  satyric  drama  was  the  inter- 
mediate stage  in  the  development  of  tragedy  from  the  dithyramb 
and  was  retained  in  the  festival  program  as  a  survival.  Within 
recent  years,  as  this  hypothesis  has  been  subjected  to  searching 
criticism,  its  supports  have  slowly  crumbled  away.  My  own 
opinion  is  that  tragedy  and  the  satyr-play  are  independent 
offshoots  of  the  dithyramb  (see  pp.  1-35,  above).  In  either  case, 
since  the  dramatic  performances  were  part  of  a  Bacchic  festival 
and  since  the  Bacchic  element  had  long  since  been  discarded  by 
tragedy  (see  p.  123,  above),  it  is  no  doubt  true  that  the  satyric 
drama  was  in  the  program  partly  in  order  to  keep  up  the  rehgious 
associations,  as  revealing  its  connection  with  Dionysus  more 
plainly  than  did  mature  tragedy.  Nevertheless  the  same 
tendencies  which  had  broken  down  the  exclusively  Dionysiac 
themes  in  tragedy  were  at  work  here  also  and  would  not  be 
denied.  We  have  already  seen  (see  pp.  126  f.,  above)  how  the 
writers  of  satyr-plays  arbitrarily  superimposed  Silenus  and  a 
chorus  of  satyrs  upon  some  non-Dionysiac  subject.     Both  in 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  FESTIVAL  ARRANGEMENTS  199 

Euripides'  Cyclops  and  in  Sophocles'  Trackers,  the  sole  extant 
representatives  of  the  genre,  the  Bacchic  element  is  restricted  to 
these  followers  of  his,  and  Dionysus  himself  figures  only  as  he  is 
apostrophized  or  mentioned  by  them.  In  438  B.C.  Euripides 
introduced  a  further  innovation  by  bringing  out  the  Alcestis  as 
the  last  play  in  his  didascalia.  Neither  Silenus  nor  the  chorus  of 
satyrs  appears  in  this  piece,  the  theme  being  entirely  non- 
Dionysiac;  but  the  drunkenness  of  Heracles  and  the  brutal 
frankness  in  the  quarrel  between  Admetus  and  his  father  suggest 
the  spirit  of  the  old  satyric  drama,  while  the  happy  ending  and 
the  humor  remind  us  of  a  comedy.  These  incongruities  and  the 
exceptionable  circumstances  under  which  the  play  was  produced 
have  occasioned  the  controversy,  which  began  in  antiquity  and 
still  continues,  as  to  how  the  Alcestis  is  to  be  classified  as  a 
literary  type.  Is  it  a  tragedy,  comedy,  satyr-play,  tragi-comedy, 
melodrama,  Schauspiel,  Tendenz-Schrift,  or  what?^  How  far 
Euripides'  innovation  in  substituting  such  a  play  for  the  usual 
satyric  drama  may  have  met  with  the  approval  and  emulation 
of  his  fellow-playwrights  we  have  no  means  of  knowing;  but 
an  extant  inscription  of  a  century  later  shows  that  the  satyr-play 
had  then  been  degraded  still  further  (Fig.  76).  At  the  City 
Dionysia  of  341,  340,  and  339  B.C.  the  poets  were  no  longer 
compelled  each  to  conclude  his  group  of  pieces  in  the  old  way, 
but  a  single  satyric  drama  was  performed,  before  the  tragedies 
began  at  all,  as  ample  recognition  of  the  Dionysiac  element  which 
had  once  been  all-pervasive  in  the  festivals. 

During  the  latter  part  of  its  history  five  comic  poets  competed 
each  year  at  the  City  Dionysia,  and  each  presented  but  a  single 
play;  there  is  some  reason  for  believing  that  the  number  was  five 
also  at  the  beginning,  but  possibly  there  were  then  only  three 
competitors.  At  any  rate  there  were  certainly  not  more  than 
three  for  a  while  during  the  Peloponnesian  War  (431-404  B.c.).^ 
"When  the  comedies  were  restricted  to  three  they  were  naturally 

'  Cf.  the  Introduction  to  Hayley's  edition,  pp.  xxiii  ff. 

'  Cf.  Capps,  in  Classical  Philology,  I  (1906),  219,  note  on  1.  5,  and  Wilhelm, 
Urkunden  dramatischer  Au^ffiihrungen  in  Athen,  pp.  195  £f. 


200  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

performed  one  on  each  of  the  last  three  days,  after  that  day's 
tragedies  and  satyr-play,  as  we  have  just  seen.  But  what  the 
arrangement  was  when  the  larger  number  was  presented  is  not 
so  obvious.  Was  a  second  comedy  crowded  into  the  program 
on  two  of  the  days  ?  Or  were  comedies  produced  also  on  the 
second  and  third  days  of  the  festival,  after  the  dithyrambic 
choruses  ?  The  latter  alternative  would  be  my  choice,  and  this 
would  explain  why  in  the  inscriptional  records  the  comedies 
preceded  the  tragedies,  though  in  the  chronological  sequence  of 
the  last  three  days  they  followed  them.  When  Aristophanes 
brought  out  his  Women  in  Council  he  was  so  unfortunate  in  the 
drawing  of  lots  as  to  be  forced  to  perform  his  play  first  in  the 
series  of  comedies.  Therefore  he  had  his  chorus  say  (vss. 
ii58ff.): 

Let  it  nothing  tell  against  me,  that  my  play  must  first  begin; 
See  that,  through  the  afterpieces,  back  to  me  your  memory  strays; 
Keep  your  oaths,  and  weU  and  truly  judge  between  the  rival  plays. 
Be  not  Hke  the  wanton  women,  never  mindful  of  the  past. 
Always  for  the  new  admirer,  always  fondest  of  the  last. 

[Rogers'  translation] 

This  close  juxtaposition  of  tragedy  and  comedy  at  the  same 
festival  must  have  strengthened  a  practice  which  in  any  case 
would  have  been  inevitable,  viz.,  that  the  comic  poets  should 
parody  Hues,  scenes,  or  even  whole  plots  of  their  tragic  confreres. 
In  a  community  as  small  as  Athens  it  was  impossible  that  advance 
knowledge  of  a  tragic  plot  or  even  the  exact  wording  of  striking 
lines  should  not  sometimes  reach  the  ears  of  a  comic  playwright 
and  be  turned  to  skilful  account  by  him.  Even  when  the  secret 
had  been  guarded  until  the  very  moment  of  presentation,  it  must 
have  been  feasible  for  a  comedian  whose  play  was  to  be  produced 
on  a  subsequent  day  of  the  festival  to  incorporate  a  few  lines  or  a 
short  scene  in  his  comedy  overnight.  But  this  is  mere  theorizing, 
for  I  remember  no  passage  where  such  "scoops"  are  mentioned. 
The  parodying  of  tragedies  brought  out  at  previous  festivals, 
however,  was  exceedingly  common.  The  extant  plays  preserve 
some  instances  of  this,  and  the  scholiasts  tell  us  of  many  others. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  FESTIVAL  ARRANGEMENTS  20l 

Parodies  of  no  less  than  thirty-three  of  Euripides'  tragedies  are 
preserved  in  the  remains  of  Aristophanes'  comedies.  But  the 
situation  is  too  well  known  to  merit  further  amplification  here, 
cf.  Murray,  op.  cii.,  passim. 

On  the  other  hand,  though  tragedy,  comedy,  and  satyric 
dramas  were  juxtaposed  at  the  festivals,  they  were  not  inter- 
mingled. The  lines  of  demarcation  were  kept  distinct.  With 
very  rare  exceptions,  like  the  Alcestis,  the  audience  always  knew 
what  kind  of  a  play  it  was  about  to  hear,  and  (what  was  even 
more  important)  the  poet  always  knew  what  kind  of  a  play  he 
was  supposed  to  write.  Of  course,  this  is  not  the  same  as  saying 
that  all  Greek  tragedies  were  alike  or  that  all  Greek  comedies 
seemed  to  be  poured  from  the  same  mold.  Within  the  type  there 
was  room  for  the  greatest  diversity,  but  the  types  did  not  overlap 
or  borrow  much  from  one  another.  This  practice  was  a  natural 
outgrowth  of  the  Greek  love  for  schematizing  which  displayed 
itself  in  the  formulation  and  observance  of  rigid  laws  in  every 
branch  of  art  and  especially  in  literature;  in  the  field  of  drama 
this  tendency  was  strengthened  by  the  festival  arrangements. 
Contrast  with  this  the  modern  confusion  of  all  the  arts  and 
all  the  Uterary  genres  which,  in  the  sphere  of  drama,  results 
in  plays  harder  to  classify  than  Polonius'  "tragical-comical- 
historical-pastorals  . ' '  This  is  one  of  the  things  that  Voltaire  had 
in  mind  when  he  declared  that  Shakespeare  wrote  like  "  a  drunken 
savage." 

The  simpHcity  of  the  Greek  effect  is  aptly  characterized  by 
Mr.  Clayton  Hamilton:''  "Although  the  ancient  drama  fre- 
quently violated  the  three  unities  of  action,  time,  and  place,  it 
always  preserved  a  fourth  unity,  wliich  we  may  call  unity  of 
mood."  Possibly  regard  for  this  fourth  unity  caused  Euripides 
to  employ  the  deus  ex  machina  at  the  conclusion  of  his  Iphigenia 
among  the  Taiirians.  It  is  well  known  that  this  is  the  play  that 
lends  least  support  to  the  frequent  charge  that  Euripides  used 
the  deus  to  cut  the  inextricable  tangle  of  his  plots.  Here  the 
jfinal,  insurmountable  difficulty  is  of  the  poet's  own  choosing. 

'  Cf.  The  Theory  of  the  Theater,  p.  ii8. 


202  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

Orestes  and  his  party  have  at  last  got  their  vessel  free  of  the  shore, 
and  all  the  playwright  needed  to  do  was  to  allow  them  to  sail  on 
in  safety  and  thus  bring  his  play  to  a  close.  But  arbitrarily  he 
causes  a  contrary  wind  and  sea  to  drive  their  ship  back  to  land, 
making  divine  intervention  indispensable.  Of  course  this  device 
enabled  him  to  overleap  the  unity  of  time  and  bring  events  far  in. 
the  future  within  the  limits  of  his  dramatic  day,  and  frequently 
that  was  all  that  Euripides  had  in  mind  in  having  recourse  to 
this  artifice  (see  p.  295,  below).  But  in  the  present  instance  I 
think  he  had  an  additional  motive,  one  which  has  a  place  in 
this  discussion.  The  gist  of  the  matter  is  well  expressed  by 
Mr.  Prickard:^  *'If  the  fugitives  had  simply  escaped,  snapping 
their  fingers  at  Thoas,  the  ending  would  have  been  essentially 
comic :  perhaps,  after  the  grave  and  pathetic  scenes  which  have 
gone  before,  we  should  rather  call  it  burlesque.  But  the  appear- 
ance of  the  deus  ex  machina,  a  device  not  itself  to  be  praised, 
enables  the  piece  to  be  finished  after  all  with  dignity  and  eleva- 
tion of  feeling." 

In  connection  with  the  foregoing  arises  another  point :  when 
the  fine  between  tragedy  and  comedy  was  drawn  so  sharply,  we 
should  hardly  expect  to  find  the  writer  of  tragedies  and  the  writer 
of  comedies  united  in  one  and  the  same  person.  As  a  matter  of 
fact  not  a  single  case  is  known  in  all  Greek  drama.  "The  sock 
and  buskin  were  not  worn  by  the  same  poet "  ;^  the  Greek  theater 
knew  no  Shakespeare.  This  very  versatility  of  the  Elizabethan 
poet  helps  to  explain  why  his  tragedies  contain  much  that  is 
humorous  and  his  comedies  much  that  is  painful,  a  characteristic 
which  has  been  so  offensive  to  his  French  critics.  Very  similar 
is  the  situation  among  the  actors.  At  the  City  Dionysia,  begin- 
ning with  449  B.C.,  a  prize  was  awarded  to  the  best  actor  in  the 
tragedies  brought  out  each  year,  and  about  325  B.C.  a  contest 
was  estabhshed  for  comic  actors.  At  the  Lenaea,  prizes  were 
offered  for  comic  and  for  tragic  actors  from  about  442  B.C.  and 
about  433  B.C.,  respectively.     These  arrangements  would  tend 

'  Cf.  his  Aristotle  on  the  Art  of  Poetry,  pp.  48  f. 

'  Cf.  Dryden,  Dramatic  Essays  (Everyman's  Library  edition),  p.  20. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  FESTIVAL  ARRANGEMENTS  203 

still  further  to  keep  each  actor  within  his  specialty.  No  per- 
former in  both  tragic  and  comic  roles  is  indubitably  known  until 
Praxiteles,  who  performed  at  Delphi  in  106  B.C.  as  a  comedian 
and  nine  years  later  as  a  tragedian.  Two  other  instances 
occurred  a  little  later.  In  the  second  century  B.C.  Thymoteles 
seems  to  have  been  both  a  tragic  poet  and  a  comic  actor.  These 
examples  exhaust  the  list  in  pre-Christian  times. 

In  the  preceding  discussion  some  changes  in  the  festival 
program  have  already  been  mentioned,  for  the  program  was  not, 
like  Athena,  fully  grown  at  birth.  For  example,  the  requirement 
that  each  tragic  poet  should  present  three  tragedies  and  a  satyric 
drama  in  a  group  did  not  go  back  to  the  introduction  of  tragedy 
by  Thespis  in  534  B.C.  and  cannot  be  established  for  any  poet 
before  Aeschylus.  It  is  likely  that  this  regulation,  together  with 
the  main  outlines  of  the  program  as  known  at  a  later  period, 
dates  from  about  501  B.C.,  when  the  festival  seems  to  have  been 
reorganized  (see  p.  319,  below).  This  is  the  period  with  which 
the  ofl&cial  records  began,  when  also  the  kosijlol,  that  is,  the  vol- 
unteer performances  from  which  formal  comedy  was  derived, 
were  first  added  to  the  festival.  In  addition  to  the  changes  that 
have  already  been  noticed  we  may  now  mention  the  following: 
It  was  not  customary  for  plays  to  be  performed  more  than  once  at 
Athens.  It  is  true  that  the  more  successful  plays  in  the  city  might 
be  repeated  at  the  Rural  Dionysia,  which  were  held  in  the  vari- 
ous demes  (townships)  during  the  month  Posideon  (December), 
and  that  some  of  these  provincial  festivals,  notably  that  at  the 
Piraeus,  were  almost  as  splendid  as  those  at  Athens  itself;  yet 
the  fact  remains  that  at  Athens  the  repetition  of  a  play  was  an 
exceptional  thing.  Thus,  when  Aeschylus  died  in  456  B.C.,  honor 
was  shown  him  by  the  provision  that  his  plays  might  be  brought 
out  in  rivalry  with  the  new  productions  of  living  tragedians,  and 
they  are  said  to  have  won  the  prize  in  this  way  several  times. ^ 
Th.is  explains  what  Aeschylus  is  represented  as  saying  in  Aris- 
tophanes' Frogs  (vss.  866  ff.),  where  he  protests  against  contend- 
ing with  Euripides  ''here  in  Hades"  on  the  ground  that  they  will 

'  Cf.  Philostratus,  Apollonius  of  Tyana,  p.  245. 


204  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

not  be  on  equal  terms,  "for  his  poetry,"  he  says,  "died  with  him 
[and  came  down  to  Hades],  so  that  he  will  be  able  to  recite  it, 
but  mine  did  not  die  with  me."  There  is  here  not  only  the 
obvious  meaning  that  Aeschylus  thought  his  poems  had  achieved 
an  immortaHty  which  Euripides'  never  could,  but  also  an  allu- 
sion to  the  special  privileges  bestowed  upon  them.  Again,  the 
Athenians  conceived  such  an  admiration  for  the  parabasis  of 
Aristophanes'  Frogs,  doubtless  on  account  of  the  sensible  and 
patriotic  advice  therein  given  the  citizens  to  compose  their 
differences,  that  the  play  was  given  a  second  time  by  request. 
As  a  result  of  such  precedents,  in  386  B.C.  the  repetition  of  one 
old  tragedy  was  given  a  regular  place  in  the  program,  as  a 
separate  feature,  however,  no  longer  in  rivalry  with  new  works; 
and  in  339  B.C.  this  arrangement  was  extended  also  to  old 
comedies.  It  must  further  be  remembered  that  the  program 
was  susceptible  of  considerable  modification  from  year  to  year. 
When  a  single  satyr-play  was  brought  out  as  a  substitute  for  one 
in  each  poet's  group  (see  p.  199,  above),  naturally  each  play- 
wright presented  three  tragedies  and  nothing  more,  and  this 
actually  happened  in  341  B.C.  But  in  the  following  year  each  of 
the  three  poets  produced  but  two  tragedies.  The  program  was 
therefore  flexible  enough  to  meet  special  needs  or  emergencies. 

It  must  be  understood  that  the  discussion  of  the  festival  pro- 
gram up  to  this  point  applies  as  a  whole  to  the  City  Dionysia 
alone  and  only  in  part  to  the  Lenaea.  For  example,  at  the 
Lenaea  there  were  no  dithyrambic  contests,  and  there  is  no 
evidence  for  the  presentation  of  old  plays  or  even  of  satyric 
dramas.  Our  most  tangible  information  is  an  inscription  for 
the  years  419  and  418  B.C.  (seep.  184,  above).  On  these  occasions 
there  were  two  poets  and  each  brought  out  two  tragedies. 

Possibly  the  first  thing,  apart  from  physical  conditions, 
which  would  strike  the  modern  theatergoer's  attention  after 
entering  an  ancient  Greek  theater  would  be  the  fact  that  he  was 
provided  with  no  playbill.  For  this  lack  he  received  compen- 
sation in  three  ways:  The  first  was  the  proagon  {irpoaycov;  irpo 
"before  "-1-0,70)1'  "contest"),  i.e.,  the  ceremony  before  the  contest. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  FESTIVAL  ARRANGEMENTS  205 

This  was  held  in  the  nearby  Odeum  on  the  eighth  day  of  the 
month  ElapheboHon  (end  of  March),  which  was  probably  the 
second  day  before  the  City  Dionysia  proper  began.  In  this 
function  the  poets,  the  actors  (without  their  masks  and  stage 
costumes),  the  choregi  (see  pp.  2  7of.,  below),  and  the  choruses 
participated.  As  the  herald  made  announcement  each  poet  and 
choregus  with  their  actors  and  chorus  presented  themselves  for 
public  inspection.  It  was  therefore  possible  for  anyone  inter- 
ested, simply  by  being  present  on  this  occasion,  to  learn  what 
poets  were  competing,  the  names  of  their  actors  and  plays,  the 
order  of  their  appearance,  and  similar  details.  Moreover,  the 
mere  titles  of  the  plays  by  themselves  would  often  convey  consid- 
erable information  to  the  more  cultured  members  of  the  audience. 
Thus,  names  like  Aeschylus'  Seven  against  Thebes,  Sophocles' 
Oedipus  at  Colonus,  and  Euripides'  Iphigenia  atAulis  or  Iphigenia 
among  the-TTrwrmn&Aiid\c2iX.e  the  locale  and  general  theme  of  the 
play  on  their  face,  and  to  the  more  cultivated  spectators  titles 
such  as  Sophocles'  Oedipus  the  King  or  Euripides'  Alcestis  would 
be  equally  significant.  On  the  other  hand,  such  names  as  Eurip- 
ides' Suppliants  or  Phoenician  Maids  would  be  either  mystify- 
ing or  misleading,  especially  if  the  hearer  was  well  enough  versed 
in  Greek  drama  to  remember  that  Aeschylus  and  Phrynichus, 
respectively,  had  apphed  these  titles  to  plays  which  actually 
dealt  with  entirely  different  incidents. 

The  proagon  furnished  the  name  and  scene  for  one  of  Aris- 
tophanes' (or  Philonides')  comedies,  but  unfortunately  we  have 
no  inkling  as  to  how  the  theme  was  treated.  In  406  B.C.  the 
news  of  Euripides'  death  came  from  Macedonia  just  before 
this  ceremony.  Sophocles  appeared  in  garments  indicative  of 
mourning  and  had  his  chorus  leave  off  their  accustomed  crowns. 
The  spectators  are  said  to  have  burst  into  tears.  In  Plato's 
Symposium  (194B)  Socrates  is  represented  as  referring  to  the 
proagon  at  the  Lenaean  festival  of  the  year  416  B.C.  as  follows: 
"I  should  be  forgetful,  O  Agathon,  of  the  courage  and  spirit 
which  you  showed  when  your  compositions  were  about  to  be 
exhibited,  when  you  mounted  the  platform  with  your  actors  and 


2o6  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

faced  so  large  an  audience  altogether  undismayed,  if  I  thought 
you  would  on  the  present  occasion  [a  celebration  in  honor  of  his 
first  victory]  be  disturbed  by  a  small  company  of  friends." 

The  second  compensation  for  the  absence  of  a  playbill  was 
provided  within  the  plays  themselves.  First,  with  reference  to 
the  imaginary  scene  of  action.  The  mythological  stories  which 
uniformly  supplied  the  tragic  playwrights  with  their  themes  were 
always  definitely  locaHzed,  and  the  tragic  poets  seemed  to  feel 
the  necessity  of  indicating  the  place  of  action.  This  was  com- 
monly done  by  having  an  actor  refer  to  "this  land  of  so-and-so," 
or  even  address  it  or  some  conspicuous  object.  At  the  beginning 
of  Sophocles'  Electra  the  aged  servant  says  to  Orestes,  "This  is 
ancient  Argos  for  which  you  longed"  (vs.  4) ;  in  the  Bacchanals, 
Dionysus  in  a  typical  Euripidean  prologue  states,  "I  come  to  this 
land  of  the  Thebans"  (vs.  i);  Apollo  begins  Euripides'  Alcestis 
with  the  words,  "O  house  of  Admetus!"  (vs.  i);  and  Eteocles 
in  Aeschylus'  Seven  against  Thebes  addresses  the  spectators, 
"O  citizens  of  Cadmus"  (vs.  i).  When  the  scene  is  changed 
within  a  play  each  locality  is  clearly  identified.  Thus  at  the 
beginning  of  Aeschylus'  Eumenides,  Delphi  is  indicated  as  the 
scene  in  the  usual  way;  a  little  later  Apollo  bids  Orestes  "go  to 
the  city  of  Pallas"  (vs.  79),  and  still  later,  when  the  shift  is 
supposed  to  have  taken  place,  Orestes  enters  and  says,  "O  Queen 
Athena,  I  come  at  the  bidding  of  Loxias"  (vs.  235).  Euripides 
was  most  punctilious  about  this  matter :  he  usually  identified  his 
scene  within  the  first  five  lines  and  always  within  the  first  fifty. 
Aeschylus  and  Sophocles  were  not  always  so  particular:  in  the 
Antigone,  Thebes  is  not  mentioned  until  vs.  loi ;  and  in  the 
Persians,  though  it  early  becomes  apparent  that  the  action  is 
laid  in  Persia,  Susa  is  not  actually  shown  to  be  the  place  of  action 
before  vs.  761.  On  the  other  hand,  Euripides  sometimes  plays 
a  Httle  joke  upon  his  audience;  for  example,  the  Andromache 
begins,  "  O  pride  of  Asia,  city  of  Thebe,  whence  I  came  to  Priam's 
princely  halls  as  Hector's  bride,"  as  if  the  scene  were  laid  in 
Asia  Minor;  but  in  vs.  16  we  learn  that  the  scene  is  really  placed 
inPhthia! 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  FESTIVAL  ARRANGEMENTS  207 


In  comedy  the  situation  was  somewhat  different.  Except  in 
mythological  parodies  the  stories  are  independent  of  tradition 
and  newly  invented,  and  usually  are  very  slightly  attached  to 
any  definite  locality.  As  a  result  the  plays  of  Old  Comedy  are 
generally  thought  of,  somewhat  vaguely,  as  taking  place  in 
Athens,  though  this  fact  is  seldom  expressly  stated,  and  we  rarely 
have  any  indication  as  to  precisely  where  in  the  city  the  scenic 
background  is  supposed  to  stand.  Occasionally  we  hear  of  the 
Pnyx  {Acharnians,  vs.  20)  or  Chloe's  temple  {Lysistrata,  vs.  385). 
But  there  is  not  a  word  in  the  Clouds  or  in  the  Women  at  the 
Thesmophoria  to  show  where  in  Athens  Socrates'  thinking-shop 
or  Agathon's  house  is  situated.  A  shift  of  scene  is  not  uncom- 
mon. At  the  beginning  of  the  Frogs,  Dionysus  visits  his  brother 
Heracles.  Since  no  other  location  is  specified,  this  scene  is 
probably  laid  in  Athens.^  At  vs.  182  the  orchestra  represents 
the  subterranean  lake,  and  at  vs.  436  the  chorus  informs  Diony- 
sus that  he  has  reached  Pluto's  door  (see  pp.  88-90,  above). 

By  the  time  of  New  Comedy,  unless  we  are  definitely  informed 
to  the  contrary,  the  scene  is  so  uniformly  laid  in  Athens  that  there 
was  no  necessity  of  saying  so.  It  is  true  that  Athens  is  mentioned 
in  Plautus'  The  Churl,  vss.  i  ff. :  ''Plautus  asks  for  a  tiny  part  of 
your  handsome  walls  where  without  the  help  of  builders  he  may 
convey  Athens,"  but  it  is  evident  that  these  words  were  added 
by  the  Roman  poet  to  the  original  and  so  are  no  exception  to  the 
Greek  practice.  That  the  action  did  customarily  take  place  in 
Athens  is  expressly  stated  in  Plautus'  Menaechmi,  vss.  8  ff . : 
"And  this  is  the  practice  of  comic  poets:  they  declare  that  every 
thing  has  been  done  at  Athens,  so  that  their  play  may  seem  more 
Greek  to  you."  So  thoroughly  was  this  principle  ingrained  in 
the  playwrights'  consciousness  that  they  were  in  danger  of  a 
lapse  when  they  evaded  it.  Thus  Calydon  is  the  imaginary 
scene  of  Plautus'  The  Carthaginian  (cf .  vs.  94) ;  nevertheless  at 
vs.  372  one  character  says  to  another,  *'If  you  will  but  have 
patience,  my  master  will  give  you  your  freedom  and  make  you 
an  Attic  citizen,"  as  if  they  were  in  Athens!    When  the  poet, 

^  Cf.  note  on  vs.  38  in  Tucker's  edition. 


2o8  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

as  in  this  instance,  deviated  from  the  usual  scene  of  action,  he  had 

one  of  the  actors,  generally  the  prologus,  warn  the  audience  by 

saying,  ''This  town  is  Ephesus"  (Plautus'  The  Braggart  Captain, 

vs.  88) ;  "Diphilus  wished  this  city  to  be  named  Cyrene"  (Plautus' 

The  Fisherman's  Rope,  vs.  32),  etc.     It  is  only  natural  that  this 

same  period  should  witness  the  rise  of  the  convention  that  the 

side  entrance  (parodus)  at  the  spectators'  right  led  to  the  harbor 

or  the  market  place  and  that  at  their  left  into  the  country,  since 

the  scene  was  regularly  placed  in  Athens  and  since  these  were  the 

actual  topographical  relationships  in  the  Athenian  theater  (see 

p.  233,  below).     So  firmly  was  this  convention  estabhshed  that  in 

Plautus'  Amphitruo,  Thebes,  an  inland  town,  is  represented  as 

having  a  harbor  Uke  Florence,  Milan,  Rome,  etc.,  in  Shakespeare, 

or  as  Bohemia  has  a  seacoast  in  The  Winter's  Tale. 

But  the  plays  notJonly  informed  the  audience  where  the 

scene  was  laid,  but  also  made  known  the  identity  of  the  dramatic 

characters.     It  is  obvious  that  the  first  character  to  appear 

would  have  to  state  his  own  name  with  more  or  less  directness 

and  then  introduce  the  next  character.     The  latter  he  might  do 

{a)  by  announcing  bluntly  "Here  comes  so-and-so,"   {h)  by 

addressing  the  newcomer  by  name,  (c)  by  himself  inquiring  his 

name  and  so  eliciting  his  identity,  or  {d)  by  loudly  summoning 

him  out  of  the  house  or  from  a  distance.     All  four  of  these  means 

are  actually  resorted  to.     Now  the  earhest  Greek  plays  have  no 

prologue,  but  begin  with  the  entrance  song  of  the  chorus  (the 

parodus,  see  p.  192,  above) .     Accordingly,  in  Aeschylus'  Persians 

the  very  first  words  are  intended  to  reveal  the  personnel  of  the 

chorus: 

We  are  the  Persian  watchmen  old, 

The  guardians  true  of  the  palace  of  gold. 

Left  to  defend  the  Asian  land, 

When  the  army  marched  to  Hellas'  strand. 

[Blackie's  translation] 

At  the  conclusion  of  their  ode,  as  Atossa  enters  they  address  her 

as  follows: 

Mistress  of  the  low-zoned  women,  queen  of  Persia's  daughters,  hail! 
Aged  mother  of  King  Xerxes,  wife  of  great  Darius,  hail! 

[Blackie's  translation], 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  FESTIVAL  ARRANGEMENTS  209 

thus  removing  all  possibility  of  doubt  as  to  the  identity  of  the  new 
arrival.  In  this  connection  it  ought  to  be  said  that  introducing 
an  actor  did  not  necessarily  involve  a  proper  name ;  often  it  was 
enough  to  indicate  the  station,  occupation,  or  relationship  of  the 
new  character.  This  rule  appUes  not  only  to  the  humbler  folk, 
such  as  messengers,  herdsmen,  nurses,  heralds,  etc. — in  fact 
Sophocles  usually  ignored  the  entrance  of  servants,  since  their 
costume  showed  their  position  clearly  enough — but  it  sometimes 
applies  also  to  those  of  the  highest  rank,  as  in  this  instance  to 
Atossa. 

Aeschylus'  earher  play,  the  Suppliants,  resembles  the  Persians 
in  having  no  prologue,  and  so  at  vs.  12  of  the  parodus  the 
choreutae  disclose  their  identity  by  declaring  that  Danaus  is 
their  father.  Moreover,  since  Danaus  enters  the  orchestra 
simultaneously  with  the  chorus,  this  statement  serves  to  intro- 
duce him  also,  though  he  has  no  chance  to  speak  until  vs.  176. 
When  he  does  speak,  however,  he  makes  assurance  doubly  sure 
by  addressing  the  chorus  as  his  *' children."  Still  again,  in  the 
fourth-century  Rhesus,  which  also  has  no  prologue,  the  chorus 
marches  in  and  summons  Hector  by  name  from  his  quarters 
(vs.  10). 

Thus  from  the  fact  that  the  early  plays  had  no  prologues, 
there  grew  up  the  practice  of  having  the  chorus  (or  coryphaeus) 
introduce  not  merely  the  first  actor  but  every  new  character, 
as  he  appeared.  For  example,  when  the  king  of  Argos  makes  his 
entrance  in  the  Suppliants  he  engages  in  conversation  with  the 
Danaids,  ignoring  their  father,  and  in  reply  to  their  question 
declares  his  name  and  station  (vss,  247  ff.).  Originally  this 
technique  was  doubtless  due  in  part  also  to  the  exigencies  of 
the  one-actor  period  (see  p.  165,  above),  and  it  continued  to 
be  the  regular  practice,  even  after  prologues  were  en  regie,  in  all 
the  plays  of  Aeschylus  and  in  the  earlier  ones  of  Sophocles 
and  Euripides.  In  comedy  this  method  of  procedure  was  less 
common,  partly  because  this  was  no  longer  the  usual  convention 
in  contemporaneous  tragedy  and  partly  because  comedy  closely 
approximates  the  manners  of  everyday  Ufe,  which  do  not  indorse 


2IO  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

this  kind  of  introduction.  When  employed  in  comedy  it  was 
often  intended  to  give  a  tone  of  tragic  parody.  For  instance,  in 
Aristophanes'  Acharnians,  vss.  1069  f.,  the  approach  of  a  mes- 
senger is  announced  by  the  chorus  as  follows:  "Lo,  here  speeds 
one  'with  bristled  crest'  as  though  to  proclaim  some  message 
dire,"  the  tragic  tone  of  which  in  the  original  is  unmistakable/ 
Phrynichus'  Phoenician  Women  was  the  first  play  which 
we  know  to  have  had  a  prologue  (476  B.C.).  Aeschylus'  Seven 
against  Thebes  has  the  earliest  extant  prologue  (467  B.C.).  Of 
course,  this  change  in  the  economy  of  the  play  involved  a  change 
also  in  dramatic  technique.  Now  the  entrance  of  actors  preceded 
that  of  the  chorus.  If  one  actor  came  alone  he  had  to  introduce 
himself,  as  Eteocles  does  in  the  Seven:  ''If  we  succeed,  the  credit 
belongs  to  heaven;  but  if  we  fail,  Eteocles  alone  will  loudly  be 
assailed  throughout  the  town."  If  two  actors  enter  together 
at  the  beginning  of  the  play  they  may  by  alternately  addressing 
each  other  by  name  make  their  identity  clear  to  the  audience, 
as  Cratus  and  Hephaestus  do  in  Aeschylus'  Prometheus  Bound. 
Moreover,  before  his  exit  Cratus  calls  Prometheus,  whom  he  has 
helped  to  nail  to  the  rocky  background,  by  name  (vs.  85).  We 
have  seen  that  when  the  chorus  opened  a  play  they  introduced 
the  actors  who  foUowed  them.  It  would  be  natural  that  when 
the  relative  position  of  actors  and  chorus  was  interchanged  the 
technique  of  introduction  should  also  be  reversed ;  in  other  words, 
that  one  of  the  actors  in  the  prologue  should  now  introduce  the 
on-coming  chorus  as  the  latter  had  previously  introduced  the 
actors.  This  actually  occurs  in  this  play:  when  the  choreutae 
appear,  the  bound  Prometheus  addresses  them  as  "children  of 
Tethys  and  Oceanus,"  vss.  136-40.  The  same  artifice  recurs  in 
Aeschylus'  Libation-Bearers,  vss.  10-16  (see  below).  But  it  is 
self-evident  that  this  manner  of  introducing  the  chorus  would 
seldom  be  satisfactory.  In  truth,  as  the  chorus  gradually  but 
unmistakably  lost  its  importance,  its  individuality  faded  away, 
and  the  need  of  formally  introducing  or  identifying  it  almost 
disappeared. 

'  Cf.  note  on  these  lines  in  Starkie's  edition,  and  Murray,  op.  cit.,  p.  30. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  FESTIVAL  ARRANGEMENTS  21 1 

The  chorus  soon  lost  the  exclusive  privilege  of  introducing 
actors  by  addressing  them.  We  have  seen  that  Cratus  and 
Hephaestus  exercise  this  function  for  one  another,  and  the  former 
does  the  same  for  Prometheus.  But  the  poets  continued  much 
longer  to  use  the  chorus  in  announcing  the  approach  of  a  new 
character.  Dr.  Graeber  {op.  ciL,  p.  26)  claims  that  Euripides 
was  the  first  to  employ  an  actor  for  this  purpose.  In  his  Alcestis 
(vss.  24  ff.),  Apollo  says: 

Lo,  yonder  Death; — I  see  him  nigh  at  hand, 
Priest  of  the  dead,  who  comes  to  hale  her  down 
To  Hades'  halls,  etc.     [Way's  translation] 

But  just  twenty  years  before,  in  Aeschylus'  Libation-Bearers 
(vss.  10-17),  Orestes  announced  the  approach  of  the  chorus  and 
Electra  as  follows : 

What  see  I  now  ?     What  company  of  women 
Is  this  that  comes  in  mourning  garb  attired  ? 


Or  am  I  right  in  guessing  that  they  bring 

Libations  to  my  father,  soothing  gifts 

To  those  beneath  ?    It  cannot  but  be  so. 

I  think  Electra,  mine  own  sister,  comes. 

By  waUing  grief  conspicuous.      [Plumptre's  translation] 

Possibly  Graeber  did  not  consider  the  last  instance  formulaic 
enough  to  count.  But  however  this  may  be,  at  last  the  actors 
largely  took  over  the  function  of  announcing  new  characters,  as 
they  previously  had  that  of  addressing  them. 

In  comedy  proper  names,  and  consequently  introductions,  are 
less  important.  The  names  of  tragedy  were  largely  traditional 
and  conveyed  a  meaning  to  all  educated  persons  in  the  audience 
as  soon  as  they  heard  them  (see  pp.  127  f .,  above) ;  but  in  comedy 
a  character  might  almost  as  well  have  no  name  at  all  as  one  which 
had  no  associations  for  the  spectators.  Accordingly,  Aris- 
tophanes and  Plautus  left  many  of  their  characters  nameless. 
Of  course  when  well-known  citizens  of  Athens,  such  as  Socrates, 
Euripides,  or  Lamachus,  were  ridiculed,  they  were  definitely 
named  at  their  first  appearance.     When  a  significant  comic  name 


212  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

was  employed  it  was  not  mentioned  until  the  audience  was  in  a 
position  to  appreciate  the  point  of  the  joke,  sometimes  not  until 
well  along  in  the  play.  Thus  in  Aristophanes'  Birds  the  names 
of  Pisthetaerus  (Plausible)  and  Euelpides  (Hopeful)  are  first 
mentioned  at  vss.  644  f . 

I  conclude  this  section  with  three  examples  of  clever  intro- 
ductions. In  Euripides'  Bacchanals  (vss.  170  ff.)  the  bhnd 
Tiresias  cries: 

Gate-warder,  ho!  call  Cadmus  forth  the  halls 

....  Say  to  him  that  Tiresias 

Seeks  him— he  knoweth  for  what  cause  I  come, 

and  Cadmus,  coming  out,  replies: 

Dear  friend,  within  mine  house  I  heard  thy  voice, 
And  knew  it,  the  wise  utterance  of  the  wise. 

[Way's  translation] 

The  announcement  of  a  new  character's  coming  was  usually  a 
pretty  artificial  device,  but  it  is  plausibly  employed  a  little 
farther  on  (vss.  210  ff.)  in  this  same  play,  when  Cadmus  says: 

Since  thou,  Tiresias,  seest  not  this  hght, 
I  will  for  thee  be  spokesman  of  thy  words. 
Lo  to  these  haUs  comes  Pentheus  hastily. 

[Way's  translation] 

Again,  at  the  beginning  of  Sophocles'  Oedipus  at  Colonus,  Oedipus 
inquires:  *'To  what  place  have  we  come,  Antigone  ?  Who  will 
receive  the  wandering  Oedipus?"  In  a  blind  man  these  ques- 
tions are  especially  natural,  and  the  use  of  the  proper  names 
identifies  the  actors'  roles.  Soon  a  stranger  approaches,  and 
to  him  Oedipus  repeats  his  first  question  (vs.  38).  His  replies 
reveal  the  location  and  significance  of  the  scenic  setting.  The 
directness  of  the  play's  first  line  finds  a  parallel  in  Shakespeare's 
Twelfth  Night,  Act  I^  scene  2 : 

Viola.    What  country,  friends,  is  this  ? 
Captain.    This  is  Illyria,  lady. 

»'  The  third  compensation  for  the  lack  of  a  playbill  was  afforded 
by  the  use  of  masks  (see  pp.  221  ff.,  below).  In  Old  Comedy 
contemporaneous  personages  were  often  introduced,  and  we  are 


Fig.  68. — Mask  of  a  Slave  in  New 

Comedy. 

See  p.  213,  n.  i 


Fig.  69. — Terra  Cotta  Mask  in 
Berlin  Representing  a  Courtesan  in 
New  Comedy. 

See  p.  213,  n.  i 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  FESTIVAL  ARRANGEMENTS  213 

told  that  their  masks  were  true  enough  to  life  for  their  identity 
to  be  recognizable  before  the  actors  had  uttered  a  word.  Accord- 
ing to  a  late  anecdote,  at  the  presentation  of  Aristophanes' 
Clouds,  Socrates  rose  from  his  place  and  remained  standing  during 
the  whole  performance  so  that  strangers  in  attendance  might 
recognize  the  original  of  his  double  on  the  stage.  In  the  Knights 
(vss.  2305.),  Aristophanes  explains  the  absence  of  a  portrait- 
mask  for  Cleon  on  the  ground  that  the  mask-makers  were  too 
apprehensive  of  that  demagogue's  vengeance  to  reproduce  his 
features.  But  the  playbill  value  of  masks  was  seen  more  Arily 
in  the  case  of  more  or  less  conventionalized  characters,  especially 
in  New  Comedy  (Figs.  68  f.)-^  Pollux,  a  writer  of  the  second 
century  a.d.,  describes  twenty-eight  such  masks  for  tragedy  and 
forty-four  for  New  Comedy.  The  hair,  of  varying  amount, 
color,  coiffure,  and  quahty,  seems  to  have  been  the  chief  criterion, 
but  dress,  complexion,  facial  features,  etc.,  were  also  taken  into 
account.  The  make-up  of  every  stock  character  was  fixed  with 
some  definiteness  and  must  have  been  well  known  to  all  intelli- 
gent spectators.  Thus  the  first  ghmpse  of  approaching  actors 
enabled  an  ancient  audience  to  identify  the  red-headed  barbarian 
slave,  the  pale  lovelorn  youth,  the  boastful  soldier,  the  voracious 
parasite,  the  scolding  wife,  the  flatterer,  the  "French"  cook,  the 
maiden  betrayed  or  in  distress,  the  stern  father,  the  designing 
courtesan,  etc.,  much  more  easily  than  a  playbill  of  the  modern 
type  would  have  done. — -^ 

If  our  modern  playgoer  in  ancient  Athens  were  an  American 
and  so  accustomed  to  staid  conduct  in  a  theatrical  audience,  he 
would  be  surprised  at  the  turmoil  of  an  Athenian  performance. 
A  Frenchman,  famiHar  with  the  riots  which  greeted  Victor 
Hugo's  Hernani  or  Bernstein's  Apres  Moi,  would  be  better 
prepared  for  the  situation.  But  in  any  case  he  would  soon 
discover  that  a  prize  was  to  be  awarded  both  in  tragedy  and  in 
comedy,  and  that  each  poet  had  his  friends,  partisans,  and  claque. 
The  comic  poets  at  least  made  no  attempt  to  conceal  the  fact 
that  there  was  a  prize  and  that  they  were  "out"  for  it.     In 

'  Figs.  68  f.  are  taken  from  Robert,  op.  cit.,  Figs.  55  and  77,  respectively. 


214  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

almost  every  play  Aristophanes'  choruses  advance  reasons, 
sometimes  serious,  sometimes  fantastic,  for  favoring  their  poet 
and  giving  him  the  victory.  A  few  examples  will  suffice.  In 
the  Women  in  Council  (vss.  11545.)  the  chorus  says: 

But  first,  a  slight  suggestion  to  the  judges. 

Let  the  wise  and  philosophic  choose  me  for  my  wisdom's  sake, 

Those  who  joy  in  mirth  and  laughter  choose  me  for  the  jests  I  make; 

Then  with  hardly  an  exception  every  vote  I'm  bound  to  win 

Keep  your  oaths,  and  well  and  truly  judge  between  the  rival  plays. 

[Rogers'  translation] 

Birds,  vss.  iioif.: 

Now  we  wish  to  tell  the  judges,  in  a  friendly  sort  of  way, 

All  the  blessings  we  shall  give  them,  if  we  gain  the  prize  today. 

[Rogers'  translation] 

Aristophanes  was  bald-headed,  and  therefore  the  chorus  humor- 
ously appeals  for  the  votes  of  all  those  similarly  afficted;  cf. 
Peace,  vss.  765  ff . : 

It  is  right  then  for  all,  young  and  old,  great  and  small. 

Henceforth  of  my  side  and  my  party  to  be, 
And  each  bald-headed  man  should  do  all  that  he  can 

That  the  prize  be  awarded  to  me.      [Rogers'  translation] 

The  Birds  (vss,  1763  ff.)  concludes  with  a  sort  of  "Lo,  the  con- 
quering hero  comes,"  an  adaptation  of  Archilochus: 

Raise  the  joyous  Paean-cry, 

Raise  the  song  of  Victory. 

lo  Paean,  alalalae, 

Mightiest  of  the  Powers,  to  thee!     [Rogers'  translation], 

where  Rogers  comments:  "These  triumphal  cries  not  only 
celebrate  the  triumph  of  Pisthetaerus  [in  the  play],  but  also 
prognosticate  the  victory  of  Aristophanes  in  the  dramatic  compe- 
tition."    Similarly,  at  the  end  of  the  Women  in  Council  (vss. 

1179  ff.): 

Then  up  with  your  feet  and  away  to  go. 

Off,  off  to  the  supper  we'll  run. 
With  a  whoop  for  the  prize,  hurrah,  hurrah, 
With  a  whoop  for  the  prize,  hurrah,  hurrah, 
Whoop,  whoop,  for  the  victory  won! 

[Rogers'  translation], 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  FESTIVAL  ARRANGEMENTS  215 

where  the  same  editor  and  translator  again  comments  as  follows : 
"These  Bacchic  cries  {Evoij  Evae)  do  not  merely  celebrate  the 
success  of  Praxagora's  revolution,  they  also  prognosticate  the 
poet's  own  success  over  his  theatrical  rivals  in  the  Bacchic 
contest."  In  tragedy  we  naturally  could  not  expect  anything 
so  frank  and  undisguised  as  the  first  three  passages  just  cited, 
but  for  the  last  two  an  adequate  parallel  is  found  in  the  tag 
which  Euripides  employed  at  the  conclusion  of  his  Iphigenia 
among  the  Taurians,  Orestes,  and  Phoenician  Maids: 

Hail,  revered  Victory: 

Rest  upon  my  life;  and  me 

Crown,  and  crown  eternally.     [Way's  translation!, 

which  the  ancient  schoHast  and  modern  editors  rightly  interpret 
as  a  prayer  for  victory  in  the  contest. 

But  if  this  were  the  extent  of  the  influence  which  the  fact  of 
there  being  a  contest  exercised  upon  Greek  drama,  the  matter 
might  quickly  be  dismissed.  Actually,  however,  the  system  in- 
volved deeper  consequences.  It  is  unnecessary  here  to  rehearse 
the  cumbersome  process  by  which  the  judges  were  appointed  and 
rendered  their  decision  upon  dramatic  events  (see  p.  272,  below). 
While  designed  to  prevent  bribery  or  intimidation,  it  had  two 
other  effects  as  well.  One  was  that,  since  we  have  no  reason  to 
believe  that  the  choice  of  judges  was  restricted  in  any  way  or 
that  they  were  not  selected  from  the  entire  free  population,  the 
judges  would  therefore  represent  the  average  intelligence  and 
taste,  and  a  poet  who  cared  for  victory  had  to  accommodate 
himself  to  this  situation  and  could  not  make  his  appeal  merely  to 
the  superior  attainments  of  the  favored,  intellectual  class. 
Secondly,  like  most  officials  at  Athens,  the  judges  were  liable  to 
be  called  to  account  for  their  conduct.  In  fact  on  the  second 
day  after  the  conclusion  of  the  City  Dionysia  a  special  popular 
assembly  was  held  in  the  theater  for  the  express  purpose  of  airing 
complaints  concerning  the  management  of  the  festival;  and  if 
the  judges  were  thought  to  have  been  recreant  to  their  duties  or 
guilty  of  favoritism,  action  could  be  taken  against  them  at  that 
time  while  the  popular  anger  was  still  hot  and  by  the  votes  of 


2i6  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

the  very  persons  whose  wishes  had  been  balked.  The  total 
efifect  of  these  arrangements  was  to  render  the  judges  extremely 
sensitive  to  the  pubHc's  expression  of  opinion,  which  was  mani- 
fested by  whistling,  catcalls,  applause,  knocking  the  heels 
against  the  seats,  etc.  Especially  in  the  dithyrambic  contests, 
where  tribal  rivalry  entered  in,  feehng  sometimes  ran  very  high 
and  personal  encounters  were  not  infrequent.  To  quell  such 
riotous  disorders  it  became  necessary  to  appoint  certain  ofl&cials 
to  maintain  order,  like  sergeants-at-arms.  In  view  of  these 
conditions,  it  is  not  surprising  that  Plato"^  complains  that  the 
choice  of  victor  had  practically  been  intrusted  to  a  general  show 
of  hands  and  that  the  necessity  of  pleasing  the  popular  taste  had 
corrupted  the  very  poets  themselves.  Let  us  consider  just  how 
this  tendency  manifested  itself. 

First  of  all,  then,  in  the  Knights,  Aristophanes  appeals  to  the 
audience  to  impress  the  judges  by  a  hearty  burst  of  applause; 

cf .  vss.  544  fif. : 

So  seeing  our  Poet  began 
In  a  mood  so  discreet,  nor  with  vulgar  conceit  rushed  headlong 

before  you  at  first, 
Loud  surges  of  praise  to  his  honour  upraise;  salute  him,  all  hands, 
with  a  hurst 
Of  hearty  triumphant  Lenaean  applause, 
That  the  bard  may  depart,  all  radiant  and  bright 
To  the  top  of  his  forehead  with  joy  and  delight, 
Having  gained,  by  your  favour ,  his  cause. 

[Rogers'  translationl 

But  some  of  Aristophanes'  contemporaries  stooped  far  lower  than 
this.  In  the  Wasps  he  warns  the  audience  not  to  expect  "two 
slaves  scattering  nuts  among  the  spectators  out  of  a  basket" 
(vss.  58  f.),  animadverting  upon  a  scene  in  a  recent  play  by 
EupoHs.  Again,  in  the  Plutus  (vss.  789  ff .)  one  of  the  characters 
refuses  an  invitation  to  have  titbits  distributed  and  adds:  *'It 
is  beneath  the  dignity  of  a  poet  to  scatter  figs  and  deHcacies  to 
the  spectators,  and  on  these  terms  to  force  their  laughter." 
In  the  Peace  (vss.  962  ff.)  he  ridiculed  such  practices  by  providing 
every  spectator  with  at  least  one  grain  of  barley!  A  more 
'  Cf.  Laws  65QA-C. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  FESTIVAL  ARRANGEMENTS  217 

drastic  parody  was  perpetrated  by  Hegemon,  who  brought  a 
cloakful  of  stones  into  the  orchestra  to  be  thrown  at  the  spec- 
tators! It  is  only  fair  to  state  that  Aristophanes  did  not  lower 
himself  by  using  such  unprofessional  appeals,  but  the  point 
which  I  am  urging  is  confirmed  by  the  practice  of  his  rivals  and 
by  the  fact  that  he  sometimes  explains  his  own  defeats  by  his 
unwillingness  to  resort  to  their  methods. 

From  the  nature  of  the  case,  tragedy  could  exhibit  no  appeals 
so  undisguised  as  the  above.  To  judge  from  Plato's  language, 
just  cited,  in  some  of  the  tragedies  of  his  day  we  might  have 
found  closer  parallels  to  these  artifices  of  the  comic  playwrights. 
Nevertheless,  fifth-century  tragedy  does  reveal  how  the  tragic 
poets  tickled  the  palates  of  their  auditors.  They  did  this  in  two 
ways:  first,  they  appealed  to  national  pride  by  rewriting  the 
mythology  in  such  a  way  as  to  assign  to  Athenian  worthies  a 
part  which  non-Attic  tradition  did  not  recognize ;  and  secondly, 
they  aroused  the  chauvinistic  spirit  by  the  sentiments,  whether 
eulogistic  of  Athens  or  derogatory  to  her  enemies,  which  they 
placed  in  their  characters'  mouths.  These  points  might  be  illus- 
trated at  great  length;  it  will  sufl&ce  to  mention  a  few  examples. 

According  to  Attic  tradition,  Medea  sojourned  for  a  while  at 
Athens.  Euripides  took  advantage  of  this  fact  in  order  to  intro- 
duce the  Aegeus  episode  into  his  Medea  and  thus  bring  the  Attic 
king  into  connection  also  with  an  earlier  part  of  the  Colchian's 
career.  His  character  in  this  play  is  presented  in  agreeable 
contrast  to  that  of  both  Medea  and  Jason,  and  his  chivalry  in 
offering  Athens  to  Medea  as  an  asylum  from  her  enemies  would 
bring  a  thrill  of  pride  to  every  Attic  heart.  Furthermore,  his 
presence  served  to  motivate  the  famous  choral  ode  (vss.  824  ff.) 

beginning : 

O  happy  the  race  in  the  ages  olden 

Of  Erechtheus,  the  seed  of  the  blest  Gods'  line, 
In  a  land  unravaged,  peace-enf olden, 

Aye  quafl&ng  of  Wisdom's  glorious  wine,  etc' 

[Way's  translation! 

'  See  pp.  xviif.  above,  and  cf.  Bartsch,  Entwickelung  des  Charakters  der  Medea 
in  der  Tragodie  des  Euripides  (Breslau,  1852),  p.  24.  For  the  Boeotian  version  of 
the  incident  in  Euripides'  Suppliants,  cf.  Pausanias  i.  39.  2. 


2i8  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

Athens  as  a  place  of  refuge  for  suppliants  was  a  favorite  note: 
the  conduct  of  Demophon  in  Euripides'  Children  of  Heracles  and 
that  of  Theseus  in  Euripides'  Suppliants  and  Sophocles'  Oedipus 
at  Colonus  must  have  given  great  pleasure  to  an  Athenian 
audience. 

Still  more  striking  are  the  sentiments  of  the  dramatic  char- 
acters. When  Euripides'  Children  of  Heracles  was  produced,  the 
Spartans  were  accustomed  to  invade  and  ravage  Attica  every 
year.  To  the  ancestors  of  these  pillagers  lolaus  says  in  the 
play  (vss.  309  ff .) : 

Boys,  we  have  put  our  friends  unto  the  test: — • 
If  home-return  shall  ever  dawn  for  you, 
And  your  sires'  halls  and  honours  ye  inherit, 
Saviours  and  friends  account  them  evermore, 
And  never  against  their  land  lift  hostile  spear, 
Remembering  this,  but  hold  them  of  all  states 
Most  dear.    [Way's  translation] 

Think  what  indignation  at  such  ingratitude  must  have  welled  up 
in  every  spectator's  heart!  Later  on  in  the  same  play  (vss. 
1026  £f.)  the  Argive  king,  Eurystheus,  whom  Athens  has  just 
defeated  in  battle,  is  made  to  say : 

But  I  bestow 
On  Athens,  who  hath  spared,  who  shamed  to  slay  me, 
An  ancient  oracle  of  Loxias, 
Which  in  far  days  shall  bless  her  more  than  seems,  etc. 

[Way's  translation] 

Again,  in  Euripides'  Alcestis  (vs.  452)  the  chorus  of  Pheraean 
elders  drags  in  an  allusion  to  "wealthy,  splendid  Athens,"  using 
the  adjective  \nrapai.  Aristophanes  said  {Acharnians,  vs.  640) 
that  the  Athenians  could  refuse  nothing  to  anyone  who  appHed 
this  epithet  to  their  city.  In  Euripides'  Trojan  Women  the 
choreutae  are  represented  as  wondering  to  what  part  of  Greece 
the  allotment  of  the  spoils  will  send  them,  and  express  the  wish 
that  they  "might  come  to  the  renowned,  heaven-blest  land  of 
Theseus"  (vss.  208  f.).  There  was  absolutely  no  reason  why 
Trojans  should  entertain  such  a  partiality  toward  Athens,  and 
this  undramatic  sentiment  is  frankly  directed  to  the  amor  patriae 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  FESTIVAL  ARRANGEMENTS  219 

of  the  playwright's  compatriots.  In  the  same  poet's  Andromache 
the  title-character  is  made  to  burst  out  into  the  following  invec- 
tive against  Sparta  (vss.  445  ff.) : 

O  ye  in  all  folk's  eyes  most  loathed  of  men, 
Dwellers  in  Sparta,  senates  of  treachery. 
Princes  of  lies,  weavers  of  webs  of  guile, 
Thoughts  crooked,  wholesome  never,  devious  all, — 
A  crime  is  your  supremacy  in  Greece!  etc' 

[Way's  translation] 

Thus,  in  effect  the  mythological  heroes  were  dragged  upon  the 
stage  before  the  Athenian  populace  and  forced  to  afhrm:  "Your 
friends  shall  be  my  friends,  and  your  enemies  my  enemies." 

It  would  be  easy  greatly  to  extend  this  list,  but  I  shall  close 
with  two  instances  in  which  it  is  particularly  obvious  that 
dramatic  illusion  has  been  sacrificed.  In  Euripides'  Suppliants 
the  Theban  herald  inquires,  ''Who  is  despot  of  this  land?" 
which  gives  Theseus  an  opportunity  to  say  (vss.  403  ff.) : 

First,  stranger,  with  false  note  thy  speech  began, 

Seeking  a  despot  here.    Our  state  is  ruled 

Not  of  one  only  man:  Athens  is  free. 

Her  people  in  the  order  of  their  course 

Rule  year  by  year,  bestowing  on  the  rich 

Advantage  none ;  the  poor  hath  equal  right. 

[Way's  translation] 

Equally  effective  with  any  jingoes  in  the  audience  would  be  the 
scene  in  the  Persians.  Here  Aeschylus  "pays  a  pleasant  com- 
pliment to  Athenian  vanity"  by  means  of  the  following  dialogue 
(vss.  231  ff.): 

Atossa.  Where,  O  friends,  is  famous  Athens  on  the  broad  face  of  the 
earth  ? 

Chorus.     Far  in  the  west :  besidethesettingof  the  lord  of  light  the  sun. 

Atossa.  This  same  Athens,  my  son  Xerxes  longed  with  much  desire  to 
take. 

Chorus.  Wisely:  for  all  Greece  submissive,  when  this  city  falls, 
will  fall. 

*  There  is  a  tradition  that  this  play  was  not  produced  in  Athens,  and  some 
maintain  that  it  was  first  played  at  Argos.  In  that  case,  in  addition  to  appealing 
to  the  convictions  of  the  pro-Athenian,  anti-Spartan  party  in  Argos,  there  must 
also  have  been  the  political  motive  of  gaining  converts  for  that  party. 


220  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

Atossa.  Are  they  many  ?  do  they  number  men  enough  to  meet  my 
son? 

Chorus.  What  they  number  was  sufficient  once  to  work  the  Medes 
much  harm. 

Atossa.  Other  strength  than  numbers  have  they?  wealth  enough 
within  themselves  ? 

Chorus.    They  can  boast  a  fount  of  silver,  native  treasure  to  the  land. 

Atossa.  Are  they  bowmen  good  ?  sure-feathered  do  their  pointed 
arrows  fly  ? 

Chorus.     Not  so.     Stable  spears  they  carry,  massy  armature  of  shields. 

Atossa.  Who  is  shepherd  of  this  people?  lord  (cViSeo-Trd^ei)  of  the 
Athenian  host  ? 

Chorus.    Slaves  are  they  to  no  man  living,  subject  to  no  earthly  name. 

Atossa.    How  can  such  repel  the  onset  of  a  strong  united  host  ? 

Chorus.     How  Darius  knew  in  Hellas,  when  he  lost  vast  armies  there. 

[Blackie's  translation] 

From  a  dramatic  standpoint  these  questions  are  out  of  place, 
since  Atossa's  ignorance  is  improbable  and  is  shown  to  be  feigned 
by  vss.  348  and  474  f .  The  first  question  is  especially  artificial. 
Nevertheless,  point  by  point  Atossa  has  drawn  out  all  the 
distinctive  points  of  pride  in  her  son's  enemies :  their  command- 
ing influence,  their  numbers,  their  resources,  their  national 
weapon,  their  freedom,  and  their  previous  exploits.  Aeschylus 
valued  dramatic  verisimilitude  less  highly  than  the  fervent 
response  that  each  of  these  couplets  would  evoke  in  every 
Athenian  breast. 

So  we  see  that  the  tragic  playwrights,  more  subtly  than  their 
comic  confreres  but  fully  as  effectively,  knew  how  to  commend 
themselves  to  the  good  graces  of  the  populace  by  incidents  and 
sentiments  no  less  palatable  than  the  nuts  and  figs  of  comedy. 
If  such  conduct  seem  to  some  to  be  beneath  the  dignity  of 
transcendent  geniuses  like  Aeschylus  and  Euripides,  a  corrective 
may  be  found  in  the  words  of  Schlegel:^  "The  dramatic  poet 
is,  more  than  any  other,  obliged  to  court  external  form  and  loud 
applause.  But  of  course  it  is  only  in  appearance  that  he  thus 
lowers  himself  to  his  hearers;  while,  in  reality,  he  is  elevating 
them  to  himself." 

'  Cf.  Lectures  on  Dramatic  Art  and  Literature,  translated  by  Black  and  Morri- 
son, p.  38. 


For  to  set  up  the  Grecian  method 
amongst  us  with  success,  it  is  absolutely 
necessary  to  restore,  not  only  their  reli- 
gion and  their  polity,  but  to  transport  us 
to  the  same  climate  in  which  Sophocles 
and  Euripides  writ;  or  else,  by  reason  of 
those  different  circumstances,  several 
things  which  were  graceful  and  decent 
with  them  must  seem  ridiculous  and 
absurd  to  us,  as  several  things  which 
would  have  appeared  highly  extravagant 
to  them  must  look  proper  and  becoming 
with  us. — John  Dennis. 

CHAPTER  V 

THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS^ 

Whether  the  use  of  masks  in  Greek  drama  originated  in  the 
mere  desire  for  a  disguise  or  in  some  ritualistic  observance  has 
not  been  definitely  established.  At  any  rate  their  employment 
was  pecuHarly  well  adapted  to  the  genius  of  the  ancient  theater. 
First  of  all  they  enabled  a  small  number  of  actors  to  carry  a  much 
larger  number  of  parts  (see  p.  1 73 ,  above) .  Secondly,  the  mouth- 
piece is  claimed  by  some  to  have  magnified  the  sound  of  the 
actor's  voice,  and  thus  helped  to  counteract  the  outstanding  fact 
in  the  physical  arrangement  of  ancient  theaters,  viz.,  their  huge 
size  (see  p.  121,  above).  But  in  particular  I  wish  to  stress  their 
bearing  upon  another  feature  of  the  classic  drama — the  huge- 
ness of  ancient  theaters,  together  with  the  lack  of  opera  glasses, 
made  impossible  an  effect  which  modern  audiences  highly 
appreciate.  I  refer  to  the  delicate  play  of  expression  on  the 
mobile  faces  of  the  performers.  In  antiquity  such  refinements  \ 
could  scarcely  have  been  seen  outside  of  the  orchestra.  A  \ 
partial  substitute  was  occasionally  found  in  a  change  of  mask    J 

'In  addition  to  the  works  mentioned  on  pp.  xvii  and  xxf.,  above,  and  the 
bibliography  listed  on  pp.  57-59,  above,  cf.  Hense,  Die  Modificirung  der  Maske  in  der 
griechischcn  Tragodie^  (1905);  Dignan,  The  Idle  Actor  in  Aeschylus  (1905);  Flick- 
inger,  "Scaenica,"  Transactions  of  the  American  Philological  Association, "KL,  (1909), 
109  ff.;  Robert,  Die  Masken  der  neueren  attischen  Komodie  (191 1);  Rees,  "The 
Significance  of  the  Parodoi  in  the  Greek  Theater,"  American  Journal  of  Philology, 
XXXII  (1911),  377  ff.,  and  "The  Function  of  the  "ilpbdvpov  in  the  Production  of 
Greek  Plays,"  Classical  Philology,  X  (1915),  117  ff.;  Harms,  De  Introitu  Perso- 
narum  in  Euripidis  et  Novae  Comoediae  Fabulis  (1914);  Mooney,  The  House-Door 
on  the  Ancient  Stage  (1914);  and  Rambo,  "The  Wing-Entrances  in  Roman 
Comedy,"  Classical  Philology,  X  (1915),  411  ff. 


2  22  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

during  the  performance.  This  became  possible  if  a  character 
was  off-stage  at  the  time  when  his  physical  or  mental  state  was 
supposed  to  be  modified  by  some  misfortune  or  accident.  Thus 
when  some  one's  eyes  are  dashed  out  behind  the  scenes,  as  in 
Sophocles'  Oedipus  the  King,  Euripides'  Eecahe  and  Cyclops, 
etc.,  the  mask  with  which  he  appears  after  this  event  would 
naturally  be  different  from  that  previously  worn.  Similarly  in 
Euripides'  Eippolytus  that  hero,  young  and  handsome,  proudly 
leaves  the  stage  at  vs.  1102.  At  vs.  1342  he  is  borne  back  in  a 
dying  condition,  battered  and  torn  by  his  runaway  team.  It 
is  plausible  to  suppose  that  this  change  is  reflected  by  a  modifica- 
tion of  his  mask  and  costume.  Still  another  type  is  seen  in 
Euripides'  Phoenician  Maids.  A  seer  has  demanded  that 
Creon's  son  be  slain  to  redeem  the  fatherland,  but  at  vs.  990 
Creon  departs  with  the  assurance  that  Menoeceus  will  seek 
safety  in  flight.  When  he  reappears  at  vs.  1308  his  brow  is  said 
to  be  clouded  by  the  news  that  his  son  had  changed  his  mind  and 
immolated  himself  for  his  country's  good. 

At  best  such  a  change  of  masks  was  but  a  clumsy  and  inade- 
quate evasion  of  the  difficulty;  yet  even  this  was  out  of  the 
question  whenever  the  catastrophe  befell  the  character  while 
on  the  scene.  In  these  cases  the  dramatists  sometimes  try  to 
explain  the  immobility  of  the  actor's  mask.  An  unusually 
successful  instance  occurs  in  Sophocles'  Electra.  Electra  had 
believed  her  brother  dead,  and  now  she  unexpectedly  holds  him 
in  her  arms,  alive  and  well.  But  not  a  spark  of  joy  can  scintillate 
across  her  wooden  features  either  then  or  later.  Her  subsequent 
passivity  is  motivated  by  Orestes'  request  that  she  continue  her 
lamentations  and  not  allow  their  mother  to  read  her  secret  in 
her  radiant  face  (vss.  1296  ff.).  Electra  replies  that  'old  hatred 
of  her  mother  is  too  ingrained  to  allow  her  countenance  to  be 
seen  wreathed  in  smiles,  but  that  her  tears  will  be  tears  of 
joy,'  which  has  the  merit  of  explaining  also  the  present  unre- 
sponsiveness of  her  features.  Sometimes  the  actor's  face  is 
hidden  at  times  when  strong  emotions  might  be  expected  to 
play  thereon.     For  example,  in  Euripides'  Orestes,  Electra  and 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS  223 

the  chorus  stand  in  the  orchestra  and  look  toward  the  palace 
within  which  Helen  is  being  slain  and  from  which  her  dying  cries 
issue.  Inasmuch  as  their  backs  are  turned  to  the  audience,  the 
spectators  are  free  to  suppose  that  their  faces  are  working  with 
excitement  and  horror.  This  fiction  will  be  destroyed  as  soon 
as  the  performers  wheel  around  toward  the  front  again.  Accord- 
ingly Electra  is  made  to  say : 

Beloved  dames,  into  the  jaws  of  death 
Hermione  cometh!    Let  our  outcry  cease: 
For  into  the  net's  meshes,  lo,  she  falls. 
Faij  quarry  this  shall  be,  so  she  be  trapped. 
Back  to  your  stations  step  with  quiet  look. 
With  hue  that  gives  no  token  of  deeds  done: 
And  I  will  wear  a  trouble-clouded  eye, 
As  who  of  deeds  accomplished  knoweth  nought. 

[Vss.  13135.;  Way's  translation] 

Electra's  ''trouble-clouded  eye"  does  noj:  refer  to  sorrow  at 
Helen's  death  but  at  her  brother's  evil  plight,  and  has  charac- 
terized her  mask  from  the  beginning  of  the  play. 

Being  largely  balked  in  this  matter,  the  Greeks  character- 
istically turned  the  Hmitation  to  good  account.  The  mask- 
makers  did  not  attempt  to  fashion  a  detailed  portrait — that 
would  have  suffered  from  the  same  difficulty  as  the  naked  human 
physiognomy;  like  our  newspaper  cartoonists,  they  reduced  each 
character  to  the  fewest  possible  traits,  which  were  suggested  in 
bold  strokes  and  were  easily  recognizable  by  even  the  most  remote 
spectator.  Under  close  inspection  representations  of  ancient 
masks  seem  grotesque  and  even  absurd  (Figs.  4,  8,  17-21,  66, 
and  68  f.),  but  it  must  be  remembered  that  distance  would  to 
a  great  extent  obliterate  this  impression.  Moreover,  such  masks 
were  admirably  adapted  to,  and  at  the  same  time  reinforced,  the 
Greek  tendency  to  depict  types  rather  than  individuals  (see 
pp.  213  and  266  f.).  On  the  modern  stage  masks  are  practically 
unknown.  We  must  not  allow  that  fact  to  prejudice  us  against 
their  possible  effectiveness.  So  respectable  an  authority  as 
Mr.  Gordon  Craig  declares  "the  expression  of  the  human  face  as 
used  by  the  theaters  of  the  last  few  centuries"  to  be  ''spasmodic 


224  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

and  ridiculous,"  that  "the  mask  is  the  only  right  medium  of 
portraying  the  expressions  of  the  soul  as  shown  through  the 
expressions  of  the  face,"  and  that  they  "will  be  used  in  place  of 
the  human  face  in  the  near  future";  and  Mr.  Cornford  testifies 
to  the  baffling,  tantalizing  effect  of  a  similar  device  at  the 
Elizabethan  Stage  Society's  representation  of  Marlowe's  Doctor 
FaustusJ- 

The  size  of  ancient  theaters  exercised  an  influence  also  in 
another  direction.  In  the  absence  of  arches  and  domes  or 
modern  steel  girders  it  was  impossible  to  roof  over  such  a  struc- 
ture without  a  multitude  of  supports  to  obstruct  the  view  and 
hearing.  Accordingly,  the  proceedings  were  exposed  to  every 
caprice  of  the  weather.  For  example,  in  the  time  of  Demetrius 
Poliorcetes  an  unseasonable  cold  spell  and  frost  broke  up  the 
procession.  On  the  other  hand  the  lack  of  an  adequate  and 
easily  controlled  artificial  illuminant  such  as  gas  or  electricity 
would  have  prevented  the  satisfactory  lighting  of  a  roofed 
theater,  could  they  have  built  one.  Therefore,  like  the  Eliza- 
bethans, their  dramas  were  presented  in  the  daytime,  and  the 
constant  harmony  between  lighting  effects  and  dramatic  situa- 
tion, which  to  us  is  a  commonplace,  was  entirely  beyond  their 
powers.  But  since  it  was  also  beyond  their  ken,  it  doubtless 
did  not  bother  them  especially,  and  Hke  much  else  was  safely 
left  to  the  well-trained  imaginations  of  the  spectators.  Thus 
dramatic  characters  frequently  address  the  heavenly  constella- 
tions in  broad  dayhght,  and  ostensibly  the  entire  action  of  the 
Rhesus  and  much  of  that  in  Euripides'  Cyclops  fall  within  the 
hours  of  night.  Nevertheless,  we  know  that  the  playwrights  ^ 
were  sometimes  self-conscious  concerning  this  discrepancy.  In 
Aristophanes'  Frogs  most  of  the  action  is  supposed  to  be  laid  in 
Hades,  and  ancient  opinion  was  unanimous  in  considering  that 
a  place  of  gloom.  Since  the  poet  could  not  count  upon  the  sun 
going  behind  a  cloud  to  suit  his  convenience,  he  undertook  to 
put   the   audience    on    their   guard    against    the    incongruity. 

'  Cf.  Craig,  On  the  Art  of  the  Tlieatre  (1911),  pp.  13  and  54 ff.,  and  Cornford, 
Thucydides  Mythisloricus  (1907),  p.  142,  n.  2. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS  225 

Toward  the  beginning  of  the  play,  when  Dionysus  is  seeking 
directions  for  his  journey  to  the  lower  world  and  the  scene  is 
still  upon  earth,  Heracles  tells  him:  "Next  a  breathing  sound  of 
flutes  will  compass  you  about  and  you  will  see  a  light  most  fair, 
even  as  here'^  (vss.  154  f.).  Furthermore,  shortly  after  the  action 
is  transferred  to  the  realm  of  Pluto,  the  matter  is  once  more 
called  to  the  spectators'  attention  by  the  chorus  of  initiates 
singing  (vss.  454  f.) :  *' We  alone  have  a  sun  and  gracious  light." 

So  far  as  I  have  observed,  the  tragedians  never  stooped  to 
apologize  for  this  absurdity,  but  they  were  willing,  whenever 
possible,  to  accommodate  themselves  to  actual  conditions.  The 
dramatic  exercises  are  said  to  have  begun  at  sunrise.  Conse- 
quently, it  is  not  surprising  that  the  action  of  tragedies  like 
Aeschylus'  Agamemnon  and  Euripides'  Iphigenia  at  Aulis,  which 
stood  first  in  the  series  presented  on  the  same  day,  should 
open  before  daybreak.  I  must  add,  however,  that  such  scenes 
occur  also  in  comedies  and  in  tragedies  which  did  not  stand  first 
in  their  series,  both  of  which  must  have  been  presented  in  the 
full  light  of  day.  These  instances  of  incongruity  are  to  be 
explained  by  stating  that  the  arrangements  and  physical  condi- 
tions which  caused  the  Greek  playwrights  usually  to  crowd  the 
action  of  their  dramas  within  a  period  of  twenty-four  hours  (see 
p.  250,  below)  would  also  lead  them  to  make  the  dramatic  day 
as  long  as  possible  by  beginning  the  action  of  their  plays  at  early 
morning. 

Lessing  and  others  have  unfavorably  contrasted  Voltaire's 
employment  of  ghosts  with  Shakespeare's  practice.  The  com- 
parison rests  principally  upon  two  points:  that  the  ghost  of 
^Hamlet's  father  complied  with  ''recognized  ghostly  conditions'* 
by  appearing  in  the  stillness  of  night  and  speaking  to  but  one, 
unaccompanied  person,  while  the  ghost  of  Ninus  in  S  emir  amis 
outraged  accepted  beliefs  by  stalking  out  of  his  tomb  in  broad 
daylight  and  making  his  appearance  before  a  large  assembly. 
Now  it  is  interesting  to  observe  that  Greek  practice  is  liable 
to  these  same  criticisms.  Thus  in  Aeschylus'  Persians  (vss. 
681  ff.)  the  ghost  of  Darius  appears  in  the  full  light  of  day  and 


2  26  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

before  his  queen  and  no  less  than  twelve  councilors.  In  Eu- 
ripides' Hecabe  (vss.  i  ff.)  the  difficulties  are  somewhat  obviated 
by  placing  the  appearance  of  Polydorus'  ghost  in  the  prologue, 
before  any  other  actor  or  the  chorus  has  come  in;  and  perhaps 
Hecabe's  words  in  vss.  68  f.,  "O  mirk  of  the  night,"  etc.,  are 
intended  to  suggest  that  the  preceding  scene  took  place  in  dark- 
ness. In  any  case,  whatever  make-beheve  the  dramatists  might 
choose  to  practice,  the  considerations  just  mentioned,  together 
with  the  almost  constant  presence  of  the  chorus,  normally  com- 
pelled apparitions  appearing  in  Greek  drama  to  violate  two 
provisions  in  the  standard  code  of  ghostly  etiquette. 

It  is  well  known  that  in  the  earhest  extant  Greek  plays,  viz., 
the  Suppliants,  Persians,  and  Prometheus  Bound  of  Aeschylus, 
the  scene  is  laid  in  the  open  countryside  with  not  a  house  in  sight  i 
and  with  no  scenic  accessories  except  an  altar,  tomb,  or  rock, 
respectively.  But  that  this  circumstance  was  explicable  by  the 
character  of  the  Athenian  theater  did  not  become  evident  until 
Dr.  Dorpfeld's  excavations  on  that  site  in  1886,  1889,  and  1895 
(see  pp.  65  if.,  above,  and  Figs.  32  and  32a).  From  499  B.C.  until 
about  465  B.C.  the  theater  at  Athens  consisted  of  an  orchestral 
circle  nearly  ninety  feet  in  diameter  and  somewhat  south  of  the 
present  orchestra,  and  an  auditorium  arranged  partly  about  it  on 
the  Acropolis  slope.  Immediately  behind  the  orchestra  there  was 
no  scene-building  or  back  scene,  but  a  six-foot  declivity.  Only 
within  the  orchestra  itself,  at  the  center  or  to  one  side,  might 
there  be  erected  for  temporary  use  some  such  theatrical  "prop- 
erty" as  an  altar  or  tomb.  Consequently  it  was  inevitable  that 
playwrights  of  the  early  fifth  century  in  choosing  an  imaginary 
scene  for  their  plays  should  react  to  these  physical  conditions 
and  localize  the  dramatic  action  in  more  or  less  deserted  spots. 
Even  as  late  as  Aeschylus'  Seven  against  Thebes  (467  B.C.), 
although  the  scene  no  longer  is  laid  in  the  countryside  but  on  the 
Theban  Acropolis,  yet  this  is  still  a  place  without  inhabitants  or 
houses.  It  should  be  noted  that  at  this  period  the  exclusive 
mode  of  ingress  and  egress  was  by  the  side  entrances,  the  parodi; 
under  normal  conditions,  any  movement  into  the  orchestra  or 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS 


227 


out  of  it,  at  the  rear,  was  entirely  precluded  by  the  declivity. 
That  such  a  primitive  theater  would  suffice  for  the  needs  of  that 
or  even  a  later  period  is  proved  by  the  remains  of  the  structure 
at  Thoricus  (Figs.  70  f.)/  which  was  never  brought  to  a  higher 
state  of  development  (see  p.  103,  above),  and  by  the  fact  that 
even  at  a  later  period  dramatists  sometimes  voluntarily  reverted 


M  I  II  M  I  I  1  I  I 


Fig.  70. — Ground  Plan  of  the  Theater  at  Thoricus  in  Attica 
See  p.  227,  n.  i 

to  this  unpretentious  stage  setting.     For  example,  in  Sophocles' 

Oedipus  at  Colonus  the  background  represented  the  untrodden 

grove  of  the  Eumenides,  so  that  practically  all  the  entrances  and 

exits  were  restricted  to  the  parodi.     An  exceptional  rear  exit  is 

aflforded  by  Aeschylus'  Prometheus  Bound,  and  an  exceptional 

rear  entrance  by  the  next  play  in  the  trilogy,  the  Prometheus 

'  Fig.  70  is  taken  from  Dorpfeld-Reisch,  Das  griechische  Theater,  Fig.  43; 
Fig.  71  is  from  a  photograph  taken  by  Professor  L.  L.  Forman  and  furnished  by 
Dr.  A.  S.  Cooley. 


228  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

Unbound.  We  have  already  seen  (see  pp.  i66  f.  and  174,  above) 
how  in  the  former  play  the  hero,  being  represented  by  a  dummy, 
cannot  speak  until  Hephaestus  leaves  the  scene  by  a  side  entrance 
and  makes  his  way  behind  the  rock  upon  which  Prometheus  is 
bound.  In  the  absence  of  a  scene-building,  the  six-foot  declivity 
must  have  been  utilized  to  conceal  the  second  half  of  this  move- 
ment. Now  the  Prometheus  Bound  ends  as  the  Titan  and  his 
crag  sink  into  the  depths;  at  the  beginning  of  the  Prometheus 
Unbound  this  crag  has  emerged  from  the  abyss.  What  was  the 
reason  for  this  maneuver  ?  Obviously  to  enable  an  actor  to  be 
substituted  for  the  lay  figure  of  Prometheus.  So  long  as  the  hero 
was  fixed  in  his  place,  an  actor  concealed  behind  him  experienced 
little  difficulty  in  speaking  his  lines  for  him ;  but  as  the  time  drew 
near  for  his  release  a  living  impersonator  was  required.  How 
was  this  substitution  managed?  I  conceive  that  a  wooden 
frame-work,  rudely  suggesting  a  rock,  was  propped  up  at  the 
outer  extremity  of  the  orchestra.  At  the  moment  of  the  catas- 
trophe the  supports  were  removed  and  the  structure  allowed  to 
collapse  into  the  declivity.  After  an  interval  sufficient  for  the 
exchange  had  elapsed,  the  rocky  background  was  once  more 
raised  into  its  place  and  braced. 

About  465  B.C.  an  advance  step  in  theatrical  conditions  was 
taken  when  a  scene-building  was  erected  on  and  just  behind  the 
orchestra,  where  the  declivity  had  previously  been  (see  pp.  66  and 
339  ff.).  This  first  scene-building  must  have  been  very  simple, 
probably  of  only  one  story,  with  parascenia  but  no  proscenium 
(Fig.  74) ,  and  capable  of  being  readily  rebuilt  so  as  to  be  accom- 
modated to  the  needs  of  different  plays.  The  extant  dramas 
show  that  from  the  first  the  new  background  was  pierced  by 
at  least  one  door  and  that  the  number  was  soon  raised  to  three, 
though  they  were  not  all  used  in  every  production.  The  different 
doorways  were  conventionally  thought  of  as  leading  into  as 
many  separate  houses  or  buildings.  Thus,  whereas  the  actors 
had  hitherto  been  able  to  enter  and  depart  only  through  the  two 
parodi,  from  one  to  three  additional  means  of  entrance  were  now 
provided.    Moreover,  the  mere  fact  of  having  a  background  was 


Fig.  71 
AUDITORIUM  AND  ORCHESTRA  OF  THE  THEATER  AT  THORICUS 

See  p.    227,  n.  i 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS  229 

no  small  advantage.  For  example,  it  enabled  Aeschylus  to 
introduce  a  distinct  improvement  in  dramatic  technique.  Here- 
tofore scenes  of  violence  must  either  have  been  boldly  enacted 
before  the  spectators'  eyes  or  reported  by  a  messenger.  Since 
the  sacrosanctity  of  the  actor  while  engaged  in  a  performance 
and  the  Greeks'  aesthetic  sense  interfered  with  the  first  alter- 
native (see  pp.  127-32,  above),  doubtless  the  second  had  usually 
been  resorted  to.  Now  Aeschylus  is  said  to  have  invented  the 
very  effective  device  of  having  a  character  killed  behind  the 
scenes  during  the  play.  In  view  of  the  physical  conditions  it  will 
be  understood  that  the  failure  of  Aeschylus'  predecessors  to 
avail  themselves  of  this  expedient  was  due  to  no  lack  of  inventive 
genius  on  their  part  but  simply  to  the  entire  absence  in  their  time 
of  a  back  scene  to  use  for  the  purpose.  It  is  not  known  just  how 
long  it  took  Aeschylus  to  discover  this  possibility  in  the  new 
arrangements ;  but  it  was  certainly  not  later  than  the  Agamemnon 
(458  B.C.),  in  which  the  king's  agonized  death  cries  from  behind 
the  scenes  (vss.  1343  and  1345)  still  have  power  to  affect  even 
modern  audiences.  Further  modifications  of  this  artifice  have 
already  been  mentioned  on  p.  128. 

One  of  the  most  troublesome  problems  that  confront  a  play- 
^wright  is  inventing  plausible  motives  to  explain  the  entrances 
and  exits  of  his  characters.  The  fundamental  nature  of  this 
problem  appears  from  the  words  of  a  modern  dramatist, 
Mr.  AKred  Sutro :  "  Before  I  start  writing  the  dialogue  of  a  play, 
I  make  sure  that  I  shall  have  an  absolutely  free  hand  over  the 
entrances  and  exits:  in  other  words,  that  there  is  ample  and 
legitimate  reason  for  each  character  appearing  in  any  particular 
scene,  and  ample  motive  for  his  leaving  it."  Now  in  the  in- 
terior scene,  and  especially  in  the  box  set,  moderns  have  a  marvel- 
ously  flexible  instrument  for  shifting  personages  on  and  off  the 
scene;  yet  few  can  avoid  abusing  this  resource  and  can  repeat 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaw's  boast:  "My  people  get  on  and  off  the  stage 
without  requiring  four  doors  to  a  room  which  in  real  life  would 
have  only  one."^     To  the  ancient  writer  the  difficulty  was  still 

'  Cf .  Three  Plays  for  Puritans,  p.  xxxvi. 


230  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

greater.  Prior  to  465  B.C.,  when  some  uninhabited  spot  was  ^ 
perforce  chosen  as  the  scene  of  action  and  the  two  parodi  were 
the  sole  means  of  ingress,  it  was  fairly  easy  to  motivate  a  person's  ^ 
first  entrance  and  withdrawal;  but  a  reappearance  proved  a 
more  difficult  matter,  and  each  additional  character  complicated 
the  problem  still  further.  Consequently,  the  ancient  playwrights 
not  infrequently  frankly  abandoned  all  search  for  a  solution  and 
considered  that  to  leave  a  character  standing  in  idleness  during 
a  whole  scene  or  choral  ode  was  less  awkward  and  improbable 
than  any  motive  which  they  could  provide  for  his  exit  and 
re-entrance.  Thus  in  Aeschylus'  Suppliants,  Danaus  enters  the  I 
orchestra  with  the  chorus  consisting  of  his  daughters  and  remains  1 
at  the  altar,  without  a  single  word  to  say,  during  their  parodus  / 
of  a  hundred  and  seventy-five  lines.  After  a  short  scene  the 
king  of  Argos  appears,  and  then  for  over  two  hundred  lines  (vss. 
234-479)  Danaus  is  again  ignored  (see  pp.  163  f.,  above).  In  this 
play  the  town  of  Argos  is  thought  of  as  lying  some  distance  away^ 
from  the  scene  of  action.  Only  an  important  errand  would  take 
Danaus  there,  and  evidently  the  poet  experienced  difficulty  in 
inventing  as  many  errands  as  dramatic  propriety  required. 
Similarly  at  vss.  181  ff.  of  Aeschylus'  Seven  against  Thebes, 
Eteocles  rebukes  the  chorus  for  their  fears  and  lamentations; 
yet  apparently  he  has  been  standing  there  during  their  whole 
parodus  (vss.  78-180)  without  a  single  word  of  protest!  But  it 
was  not  characteristic  of  the  Greek  genius  tamely  to  submit  to 
hindrances,  and  accordingly  we  are  not  surprised  that  Aeschylus 
actually  secured  a  striking  dramatic  effect  by  leaving  characters 
like  Niobe  and  Achilles  for  considerable  intervals  speechless  and 
immovable  on  the  scene.  When  finally  uttered,  their  startling 
cries  of  anguish  were  greatly  enhanced  by  their  previous  long- 
continued  silence.  It  may  not  be  amiss  to  note  that  Moliere 
obtained  similar  suspense  by  means  quite  opposite.  In  Tartufe, 
contrary  to  all  the  accepted  rules,  the  principal  character  does 
not  appear  upon  the  scene  until  after  the  beginning  of  the  third 
act.  But  the  conversation  and  disputes  of  the  other  dramatic 
personages  have  so  inflamed  our  curiosity  concerning  him  that  we 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS  231 

can  scarcely  wait  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  him,  and  his  entrance 
finally  is  thrice  as  effective  as  if  it  had  come  earlier  in  the  play. 

The  erection  of  a  scene-building  about  465  B.C.  somewhat 
relieved  the  difficulty  of  the  playwrights'  problem.  First  of  all 
the  places  of  entrance  were  increased  50  per  cent  or  more. 
Secondly,  the  new  entrances  were  nearer  the  orchestra  than  were 
the  parodi  and  enabled  an  actor  to  come  in  or  depart  more 
quickly.  Thirdly,  the  presence  of  buildings  almost  required  the 
scene  to  be  laid  in  a  town  or  city  and  correspondingly  multiplied 
the  possible  motives  for  visiting  it.  And  finally,  since  the  door- 
ways often  represented  the  homes  of  certain  of  the  dramatic 
characters,  no  elaborate  motivation  was  needed  to  explain  their 
passing  in  and  out  at  frequent  intervals.  When  his  work  was 
done,  the  useless  actor  could  be  temporarily  eliminated  with 
neatness  and  dispatch.  These  considerations  and  the  intro- 
duction of  the  third  actor  at  about  the  same  time  (see  p.  167, 
above)  soon  doubled  the  amount  of  coming  and  going  in  the 
plays  (cf.  Mooney,  op.  ciL,  p.  54).  The  influence  of  the  former 
factor  appears  in  Euripides'  Suppliants,  the  action  of  which 
takes  place  before  a  temple.  It  so  happens,  however,  that  the 
temple  doors  in  this  case  are  not  used  for  entrances  and  exits. 
Consequently  of  all  Euripides'  tragedies  this  one  has  the  least 
passing  to  and  fro.  On  the  other  hand  the  influence  of  the  second 
factor  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  this  piece  and  Sophocles'  Oedipus 
at  Colonus  (see  p.  227,  above),  both  making  practically  no  use  of 
their  back  scene  but  both  employing  three  actors,  are  higher  in 
"action"  than  the  corresponding  plays  of  Aeschylus,  which 
belong  to  the  two-actor  period. 

Nevertheless,  when  all  is  said,  the  erection  of  a  scene-building 
still  left  the  ancient  dramatists  far  behind  the  moderns  in  the  easy 
and  plausible  motivation  of  their  characters'  movements,  and 
no  further  advance  (from  this  point  of  view)  was  subsequently 
made  in  the  theatrical  arrangements.  All  the  dramatic  per- 
sonages still  had  to  come  to  the  same  (usually  a  pubhc)  place; 
they  could  not  dodge  in  at  one  door  and  out  at  another  at  their 
creator's  caprice,  but  whether  entering  or  leaving  had  to  walk 


232  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

a  considerable  distance  in  plain  view  of  the  spectators.  Con- 
sequently the  silent  actor  is  found  after  465  B.C.  as  well  as  before. 
Thus  in  Euripides'  Suppliants  one  or  more  characters  are  being 
neglected  at  almost  every  point.  But  in  my  opinion  this  phe- 
nomenon is  no  longer  due  primarily  to  the  inadequacy  of  the 
theatrical  arrangements  but  to  other  considerations.  For  ex- 
ample, the  limited  number  of  actors  often  resulted  in  prolonged 
or  awkward  silence  on  the  part  of  a  character  who  was  being 
impersonated  by  a  mute  (see  pp.  174-82,  above).  Again,  in  the 
Alcestis,  after  Heracles  has  brought  the  queen  back  from  her 
grave,  she  utters  never  a  word.  Euripides  himself  explains  this 
on  the  ground  that  she  may  not  speak  until  her  consecration  to 
the  gods  of  the  lower  world  be  undone  and  the  third  day  come 
(vss.  1 144  ff.).  This  is  a  clever  pretext  but  not  the  real  reason. 
Nor  do  I  think,  as  some  do,  that  in  this  instance  the  limitation 
of  actors  is  responsible,  since  only  two  actors  speak  in  this  scene 
and  the  play  belongs  to  the  three-actor  period.  Alcestis'  silence 
springs  rather  from  the  impossibiHty  of  placing  in  her  mouth  a 
message  worthy  of  her  experiences,  one  which  "telling  what  it 
is  to  die  had  surely  added  praise  to  praise."  Still  again  the 
silence  frequently  arises  from  inability  to  master  the  technique 
of  the  trialogue  (see  pp.  169  f .)  or  from  the  nature  of  the  plot. 
In  any  trial  scene  it  is  almost  inevitable  that  both  the  judge  and 
the  accused  should  remain  inactive  for  considerable  intervals. 
Thus  in  Aeschylus'  Eumenides  the  silence  of  Athena  (vss.  585- 
673  and  711-33)  and  of  Orestes  (vss.  244-63,  307-435,  490-585, 
and  614-743)  is  scarcely  more  noteworthy  than  that  of  the  Duke 
and  Antonio  in  Act  IV  of  The  Merchant  of  Venice.  When  his 
case  was  about  to  be  decided,  Orestes  terminated  a  silence  of  one 
hundred  and  thirty  lines  by  the  thrilhng  ejaculation,  "  O  Phoebus 
Apollo,  what  shall  the  judgment  be!"  (vs.  744) — another  ex- 
ample of  the  dexterity  with  which  the  Greek  poets  could  trans- 
mute base  metal  into  pure  gold. 

It  need  not  be  said  that  the  same  difficulty  of  plausible 
motivation  puzzled  the  comic  as  well  as  the  tragic  writers  of 
antiquity,  and  they  extricated  themselves  with  no  less  ingenuity 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS  233 

in  their  own  way.  For  the  further  unfolding  of  the  plot  in 
Plautus'  Pseudolus  it  became  necessary  that  that  crafty  slave 
should  explain  to  his  accomplices  certain  developments  which 
had  already  been  represented  on  the  scene.  Actually  to  repeat 
the  facts  would  have  been  tedious  to  the  spectators,  while  to 
motive  an  exit  for  all  the  parties  concerned  until  the  information 
could  be  imparted  and  then  to  motive  their  re-entrance  might 
have  proved  difficult  and  certainly  would  have  caused  an  awk- 
ward pause  in  the  action.  The  poet  therefore  chose  the  bolder 
course  of  dropping  for  the  moment  all  dramatic  illusion  and  at 
the  same  time  of  slyly  poking  fun  at  the  conventions  of  his  art: 
''This  play  is  being  performed  for  the  sake  of  these  spectators. 
They  have  been  here,  and  are  aware  of  developments.  I'll  tell 
you  about  them  afterwards "(!)  (vss.  720  f.). 

We  have  already  referred  to  the  fact  that  topographical 
conditions  in  Athens  gave  rise  to  a  convention  regarding  the 
significance  of  the  parodi  (see  p.  208,  above).  As  the  spectator 
sat  on  the  south  slope  of  the  Acropolis  at  Athens,  with  the 
orchestra  and  scene-buildings  before  him,  the  harbor  of  the 
Piraeus  and  the  market  place  lay  toward  his  right  and  the  open 
country  on  his  left  (Fig.  29).  And  since  the  theater  was  roofless 
and  the  performances  given  in  dayhght,  these  relationships  were 
visible  and  must  at  all  times  have  been  present  to  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  audience.  The  matter  was,  therefore,  one  of  more 
consequence  than  in  the  modern  theater,  where  many  spectators, 
being  unable  to  see  points  of  orientation  outside,  would  be 
puzzled  to  indicate  the  points  of  the  compass.  In  the  Athenian 
theater,  on  the  contrary,  if  the  scene  were  laid  locally  no  poet 
or  stage  manager  could  have  allowed  a  character  from  the  Piraeus 
to  enter  by  the  left  (east)  parodus  without  committing  a  patent 
absurdity.  In  such  a  case  there  was,  at  the  beginning,  no 
convention;  the  plays  simply  reacted  to  actual  local  conditions. 
But  the  fifth-century  plays  were  rarely  laid  in  Athens,  and  in 
them  comparatively  little  is  said  of  harbor,  market  place,  or 
countryside,  whether  at  Athens  or  elsewhere.  Apart  from  a  rigid 
convention,   there  would   be   no   point   in  staging  Aeschylus' 


234 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


Suppliants,  the  scene  of  which  is  laid  just  outside  the  city  of 
Argos,  or  Aristophanes'  Birds,  whose  scene  is  supposed  to  be  in 
the  clouds,  in  such  a  way  as  to  conform  to  Athenian  topography. 
In  fact,  incidental  allusions  in  the  fifth-century  plays,  the  com- 
parative infrequency  in  them  of  references  to  harbor,  country,  and 
market  place,  and  minor  infelicities  arising  from  any  attempt  to 
foist  this  convention  upon  them,  would  all  seem  to  indicate  that 
these  plays  had  been  written  without  much  regard  for  local 
geography.  But  with  increasing  frequency  Athens  became  the 
imaginary  scene  of  comedies,  and  the  relationships  which  had 
become  a  fixed  rule  for  them  were  transferred  to  tragedy  also, 
and  soon  to  other  theaters  whose  setting  bore  little  or  no  resem- 
blance to  that  of  the  theater  of  Dionysus  Eleuthereus.  Certainly 
by  the  time  of  New  Comedy  the  convention  was  firmly  estab- 
lished, and  except  for  characters  leaving  or  entering  the  houses 
in  the  background  almost  every  exit  or  entrance  was  oriented  for 
the  audience  with  reference  to  country,  harbor,  or  market  place. 
When  Greek  comedy  was  transplanted  to  Italian  soil  the  con- 
vention was  taken  over,  too,  and  reappears,  possibly  with  some 
modification,  in  the  plays  of  Plautus  and  Terence. 

Regardless  of  the  convention,  however,  and  the  period  of  its 
origin  there  is  one  blemish  which  careful  stage  managers  now- 
adays seek  to  avoid.  When  a  door  closes  upon  a  departing 
character,  it  should  not  be  immediately  opened  again  to  admit 
another  character,  whom  the  first  character  must  have  brushed 
against  in  the  hall.  A  slight  pause  is  somehow  provided  to 
enable  the  two  characters  to  avoid  meeting  and  to  give  the  sense 
of  space  beyond  the  room  on  the  stage.  Now  in  Euripides' 
Alcestis  a  violation  of  this  common-sense  principle  of  stage 
craft  seems  to  occur.  At  vs.  747  Admetus  and  the  chorus  have 
departed  bearing  the  body  of  Alcestis  to  its  last  resting  place. 
In  the  ensuing  scene  Heracles  at  last  learns  the  identity  of  the 
deceased  and  at  vs.  860  rushes  out  to  wrestle  with  the  king  of  the 
dead  beside  the  grave.  In  the  very  next  verse  Admetus  returns. 
According  to  the  Hellenistic  convention  Heracles  must  have 
departed  and  Admetus  have  re-entered  through  the  parodus  at 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS  235 

the  audience's  left.  But  which  parodus  was  employed  does  not 
in  this  case  greatly  matter.  The  point  is  that  since  Heracles 
was  bound  for  the  spot  from  which  Admetus  was  returning,  they 
must  have  used  the  same  parodus.  Nevertheless,  later  develop- 
ments show  that  they  did  not  meet;  indeed,  certain  telling 
features  of  the  denouement  would  have  been  spoiled  if  they  had. 
Yet  how  could  they  avoid  doing  so  ?  The  play  furnishes  no 
reply.  So  far  as  I  can  see  the  only  way  in  which  the  difficulty 
can  be  obviated  is  by  supposing  that  vss.  747-860  take  place 
before  a  slightly  different  part  of  the  palace  from  the  rest  of  the 
play.  Scholars,  however,  do  not  commonly  accept  a  change  of 
scene  in  this  piece  (see  pp.  250 f.,  below). 

The  space  between  the  two  parodi  and  leading  past  the  scene- 
building  was  usually  thought  of  as  representing  a  street  or  road- 
way (see  p.  86,  above).  In  the  Hellenistic  theater  at  Athens  a 
stone  proscenium  ran  across  the  front  of  the  scene-building 
from  one  parascenium  to  the  other  (see  p.  70,  above)  (Fig.  38), 
and  it  is  likely  that  a  wooden  proscenium  occupied  the  same 
space  from  about  430  B.C.  It  is  true  that  the  stone  foundation 
of  the  parascenia,  which  served  as  a  framework  for  the  pro- 
scenium, cannot  be  dated  much  earlier  than  415-421  B.C.  (see 
p.  67  and  n.  i,  above).  But  there  is  now  reason  to  believe  that 
parascenia  entirely  of  wood  were  erected  long  before  permanent 
foundations  were  provided  for  them,  perhaps  as  early  as  465  B.C. 
(see  pp.  342  f.),  and  the  proscenium  colonnade  seems  to  have  been 
employed  at  least  as  early  as  Euripides'  Hippolytus  (428  B.C.)  and 
Aristophanes'  Clouds  (423  B.C.) .  Confirmation  for  this  conclusion 
may  be  found  in  the  fact  that  the  crane  {fj-rixo-vri)  was  introduced 
at  about  this  same  time  (see  p.  289,  below) .  When  the  scene  was 
laid  before  a  private  house  or  a  palace,  the  colonnade  was  in 
place  as  signifying  its  prothyron  {irpbdvpov)  or  "porch."  When 
the  background  was  thought  of  as  a  temple  the  proscenium  was 
its  pronaos  (jrpovaos)  or  ''portico."  Moreover,  when  a  less 
conventional  setting  was  required,  painted  panels  (TrivaKes) 
could  be  inserted  in  the  intercolumniations  in  order  to  suggest 
the  desired  locality,  and  in  some  theaters  the  proscenium  columns 


236  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

were  shaped  so  as  to  hold  such  panels  more  firmly  in  place  (Fig. 
']2)}  Thus  the  action  in  Sophocles'  Oedipus  at  Colonus  takes 
place  before  a  grove,  and  that  in  Plautus'  The  Fisherman's  Rope, 
along  a  beach.  The  interruption  of  natural  scenery  by  columns 
at  regular  intervals  would  be  disturbing  to  us;  that  it  did  not 
seem  so  to  the  Greeks  was  due  not  only  to  their  ignorance  of 
modern  scenery  but  also  to  the  sketchy  shorthand  which  they 
practiced  in  other  fields  of  art.  On  ancient  vases,  for  example, 
a  whole  forest  is  frequently  represented  by  a  single  tree.     A 


\^ 


Fig.  72. — Horizontal  Sections  of  Proscenium  Columns  at  Megalopolis  and 
Eretria  (i),  Epidaurus  (2),  Delos  (3),  and  Oropus  (4). 

See  p.  236, n.  i 

similar  convention  obtains  in  the  drama  of  modern  Persia,  where 
"the  desert  is  represented  by  a  handful  of  sand  on  the  platform, 
the  river  Tigris  by  a  leather  basin  full  of  water.  "^  Sophocles 
is  said  to  have  invented  scene  painting  during  the  lifetime  of 
Aeschylus  (see  p.  66,  above),  but  this  must  be  interpreted  as 
meaning  that  he  had  the  panels  applied  directly  to  the  front  of 
the  scene-building,  the  proscenium  being  not  yet  introduced. 
It  has  also  been  suggested,  on  the  basis  of  certain  vase  paintings 
(Fig.  73), 3  that  an  actual  porch  (prothyron)  was  sometimes  built 

'  Fig.  72  is  taken  from  Puchstein,  Die  griechische  Buhne,  Fig.  3. 

*  Cf.  Ridgeway,  Dramas  and  Dramatic  Dances  of  Non-European  Races,  p.  83. 

5  Fig.  73  is  taken  from  Baumeister,  Denkmaler,  Fig.  980.  Within  the  prothy- 
ron are  the  king  of  Corinth  and  his  daughter,  Jason's  second  wife.  The  latter  is 
being  assisted  by  her  brother.  In  front  lies  an  opened  box  which  contained  the 
poisoned  gifts.  From  the  other  side  the  queen  comes  rushing.  In  the  foreground 
is  Medea  slaying  one  of  her  children,  while  a  youth  tries  to  rescue  the  other.     In 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS 


237 


extending  from  the  center  of  the  proscenium  or  taking  the  place 
of  a  proscenium  and  extending  from  the  center  of  the  scene- 
building's  front  wall.  But  perhaps  these  paintings  are  only 
conventionalized  representations  of  the  proscenium  colonnade 


Fig.  73. — A  Fourth-Century  Vase  in  Munich  Representing  the  Vengeance 

of  Medea. 

See  p.  236,  n.  3 


itself.     In  any  case  it  is  important  to  observe  that  no  background 
corresponding  to  the  scene-building  is  indicated  on  the  vases. 

Now  it  will  be  noted  that  these  theatrical  arrangements 
made  no  provision  for  an  interior  scene.  The  dramatic  action 
was  necessarily  laid  in  the  open  air,  usually  before  a  palace, 


the  center  is  Oistros,  the  demon  of  madness,  mounted  upon  a  dragon  chariot. 
Further  on  Jason  is  hastening  to  aid  his  boys,  and  on  the  extreme  right  is  the  ghost 
of  Aeetes,  Medea's  father.  The  design  is  apparently  not  based  upon  Euripides' 
Medea.     Cf.  Earle's  edition,  pp.  60  f. 


238  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

private  house,  or  temple.  Though  occasional  plays,  like  Mr. 
Louis  Parker's  Pomander  Walk,  show  that  the  thing  can  still  be 
managed,  in  general  modern  dramatists  would  be  paralyzed  by 
such  a  requirement.  Nor  is  it  correct  to  state  that  the  classical 
poets  ''seldom  had  occasion  to  show  an  interior  scene."  The 
truth  is  precisely  the  opposite :  having  no  way  in  which  to  show 
an  interior  they  were  constrained  to  rest  content  with  alfresco 
scenes.  Yet  the  situation  was  not  so  desperate  as  it  would  seem. 
Corneille  pointed  out  that  Greek  kings  could  meet  and  speak  in 
public  without  a  breach  of  etiquette.^  At  the  French  court,  and 
consequently  on  the  French  stage,  such  conduct  would  have  been 
intolerable.  In  the  second  place  the  mildness  of  a  southern 
climate  justified  some  practices  which  might  appear  strange  to 
more  northern  peoples.  Many  things  which  we  would  consider 
must  be  kept  strictly  within  doors  would  sometimes  take  place 
in  the  street.  Semi-privacy  was  afforded  by  porches  and 
porticoes,  that  is,  theatrically  speaking,  by  the  colonnade  of  the 
proscenium.  Our  nearest  parallel  would  be  sun  parlors  or 
screened  porches  and  even  these  fall  short.  Doubtless  this 
difference  in  weather  conditions  has  something  to  do  with  the 
fact  that  modern  playwrights  of  the  classic  school,  who,  though 
freed  from  the  material  restrictions  of  the  ancients,  have  yet 
slavishly  imitated  them  in  so  much  else,  have  not  followed  them 
in  this  partiahty  for  outdoor  scenes.  Allowance  must  also  be 
made  for  the  fact  that  in  comedy  the  characters  uniformly 
belonged  to  the  lower  strata  of  society.  Accordingly  we  need 
feel  httle  surprise  that  in  Aristophanes'  Clouds  (vss.  i  ff.) 
Strepsiades  and  his  son  are  disclosed  sleeping  before  their  home 
in  the  open  air,  though  we  have  no  reason  to  believe  that  they 
are  either  actual  or  prospective  victims  of  tuberculosis.  In 
Euripides'  Orestes  (vss.  i  ff.)  the  matricide,  wasted  by  illness, 
lies  on  his  couch  before  the  palace  in  Argos  under  his  sister's 
care.  In  Plautus'  The  Churl  (vss.  448  ff.),  Phronesium  reclines 
on  a  bed  before  the  house,  pretending  that  she  has  given  birth  to 
a  child.     In  Plautus'  The  Haunted  House  (vss.  2482.),  Phile- 

'  Cf.  Discours  des  Irois  unites,  I,  119  (Regnier's  edition;  1862). 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS  239 

matium  asks  her  maid  for  a  mirror,  jewel  box,  etc.,  and  a  scene 
of  prinking  ensues  in  the  open  air.  Scenes  of  outdoor  feasting 
and  carousing  are  too  numerous  to  deserve  individual  mention. 
I  cannot  accept  the  contention  that  the  action  of  such  scenes 
takes  place  in  an  "imaginary  interior."  They  are  frankly  out 
of  doors;  in  this  connection  such  expressions  as  "outside  the 
house,"  "before  the  doors,"  etc.,  are  frequent.  These  scenes 
were  enacted  in  the  colonnade  of  the  proscenium  and  are  correctly 
copied  from  ancient  life.  Of  course  I  concede  that  in  real  life 
they  would  take  place  indoors  as  often  as  out,  or  even  more  often; 
but  they  were  common  enough  as  open-air  scenes  to  justify  the 
playwrights  in  constantly  transcribing  them  in  this  fashion. 

But  the  significance  of  the  considerations  mentioned  in  the 
last  paragraph  must  not  be  overestimated.  The  difficulty 
arising  from  physical  conditions  in  the  theater  was  cumulative. 
In  other  words  the  placing  of  any  particular  scene  in  the  open 
air  was  generally  justifiable  by  ancient  habits  of  living  and  not 
difficult  to  motivate;  but  to  place  every  scene  in  every  play  out 
of  doors  and  under  these  conditions  to  invent  a  plausible  motive 
for  every  entrance  taxed  the  dramatists'  powers  to  the  utmost 
and  sometimes  exceeded  them.^  No  wonder,  then,  that  occa- 
sionally they  abandoned  all  attempts  to  explain  their  characters' 
movements  and  coolly  allowed  them  to  leave  their  dwellings  and 
to  speak,  without  apology  or  excuse,  of  the  most  confidential 
matters  in  a  public  place.  Many  instances  of  this  license, 
however,  seem  to  have  been  conditioned  by  definite  rules.  For 
example,  if  a  character  leaves  his  house  while  engaged  in  con- 
versation with  another,  no  reason  is  given  for  their  entrance, 
i.e.,  for  their  not  having  concluded  the  conversation  where  it  was 
begun.  Examples  of  this  technique  do  not  occur  until  about 
400  B.C.  (see  p.  310,  below,  and  the  instances  there  cited). 
Secondly,  no  entrance  motive  is  provided  when  a  character  is  to 
take  part  in  a  dialogue  with  another  who  is  already  on  the  scene 
and  whose  own  entrance  has  been  motived.  Thus  in  Euripides' 
Alcestis,  Heracles  enters  at  vs.  476  in  order  to  seek  hospitality 

'  Cf.  Legrand,  The  New  Greek  Comedy,  pp.  356  f.,  Loeb's  translation. 


240  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

at  Admetus'  palace;  at  vs.  506  the  chorus  announces  the  king's 
emergence,  which  is  entirely  unmotived.  Six  other  examples  of 
this  technique  occur  in  Greek  tragedy. 

Nevertheless,  in  general  the  ancient  playwrights  displayed 
an  amazing  fertility  of  invention  in  explaining  why  their  char- 
acters came  out  of  doors  and  spoke  in  so  public  a  place  of  matters 
which  might  more  naturally  have  been  reserved  for  greater 
privacy.  Thus  in  Euripides'  Alcestis,  Apollo  explains  his  leaving 
Admetus'  palace  on  the  ground  of  the  pollution  which  a  corpse 
would  bring  upon  all  within  the  house  (vss.  22  f.)  and  Alcestis 
herself,  though  in  a  dying  condition,  fares  forth  to  look  for  the 
last  time  upon  the  sun  in  heaven  (vs.  206).  Oedipus  is  so  con- 
cerned in  the  afflictions  of  his  subjects  that  he  cannot  endure  the 
thought  of  making  inquiries  through  a  servant  but  comes  forth 
to  learn  the  situation  in  person  (Sophocles'  Oedipus  the  King, 
vss.  6  f .) ;  Carion  is  driven  out  of  doors  by  the  smoke  of  sac- 
rifice upon  the  domestic  altar  (Aristophanes'  Plutus,  vss.  821  f.); 
Polyphemus  leaves  his  cave  intending  to  visit  his  brothers  for  a 
carousal  (cf.  Euripides'  Cyclops,  vss.  445  f.  and  507  £f.).  In 
Euripides'  Andromache,  Hermione's  nurse,  worn  out  in  the 
attempt  to  save  her  mistress  from  self-destruction,  hurries  out 
and  appeals  to  the  chorus  for  assistance;  a  moment  later  Her- 
mione  herself  escapes  from  the  restraining  clutches  of  her 
attendants  and  rushes  upon  the  stage  (vss.  816  ff.).  Agathon 
cannot  compose  his  odes  in  the  winter  time  unless  he  bask  in 
the  sunlight  (Aristophanes'  Women  at  the  Thesmophoria,  vss. 
67  f.).  In  Plautus'  The  Haunted  House  (vss.  i  ff.)  one  slave  is 
driven  out  of  doors  by  another  as  the  result  of  a  quarrel.  The 
lovelorn  Phaedra  teases  for  light  and  air  (Euripides'  Hippolytus, 
vss.  1 78ff .) .  Medea's  nurse  apologizes  for  soliloquizing  before  the 
house  with  the  excuse  that  the  sorrows  within  have  stifled  her 
and  caused  her  to  seek  relief  by  proclaiming  them  to  earth  and 
sky  (cf.  Euripides'  Medea,  vss.  56  ff.  and  pp.  307  f.,  below).  And 
Antigone  informs  her  sister  that  she  has  summoned  her  out  of 
doors  in  order  to  speak  with  her  alone  (Sophocles'  Antigone, 
vss.  18  f.),  as  if  that  were  the  most  natural  place  in  the  world  for 
a  t^te-a-tete.     In  connection  with  this  last  instance  it  must  be 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS  241 

remembered  that  the  interior  of  ancient  houses  was  arranged 
differently  than  ours  and  was  more  favorable  for  eavesdropping 
(cf.  Terence's  Phormio,  vss.  862-69). 

The  difficulty  inherent  in  the  exclusive  use  of  exterior  scenes 
appears  very  strikingly  in  Euripides'  Cyclops.  Here  the  action 
would  naturally  take  place  in  Polyphemus'  cave,  as  it  does  in 
Homer's  Odyssey;  but,  theatrical  conditions  making  that  impos- 
sible, the  scene  is  laid  before  the  cave's  mouth.  Contrary  to 
verisimilitude,  therefore,  the  poet  is  obliged  to  allow  Odysseus 
to  pass  in  and  out  without  let  or  hindrance.  Why,  then,  does 
he  make  no  attempt  to  escape  ?  Euripides  anticipated  this  query 
and  explained  Odysseus'  remaining  by  regard  for  his  companions' 
safety  (vss.  479  ff.).  But  why  was  it  not  equally  feasible  for  his 
comrades  to  leave  the  cave  and  for  all  to  be  saved  together? 
The  poet  can  think  of  no  better  motive  than  that  Odysseus'  pride 
and  sense  of  honor  caused  him  to  desire  to  take  vengeance  on 
Polyphemus  for  having  murdered  some  of  his  followers  (vss. 

694  f.); 

Being  unable  actually  to  represent  an  interior  scene  the  Greek 
playwrights  gladly  availed  themselves  of  several  substitutes. 
The  most  common  of  these  was  the  messenger's  speech  (see  p.  164, 
above),  by  which  occurrences  that  had  taken  place  indoors  were 
related  to  the  chorus  or  to  actors  before  the  house.  Another  sub- 
stitute was  found  in  the  cries  of  characters  murdered  behind  the 
scenes  (see  pp.  128  and  229,  above).  A  third  method  consisted 
in  throwing  open  the  doors  in  the  background  and  revealing  a 
scene  of  murder  done  within  (see  p.  128,  above).  We  are  told 
further  that  sometimes,  when  the  doors  were  flung  open,  a  plat- 
form, with  a  tableau  mounted  upon  it,  was  pushed  forward  for  a 
few  moments  (see  the  discussion  of  the  eccyclema  on  pp.  284-89, 
below) .  A  fourth  evasion  of  the  restriction  occurs  in  Euripides' 
Hippolytus,  vss.  565  ff.  Phaedra  from  her  couch  in  the  pro- 
scenium colonnade  hears  the  voices  of  her  confidential  slave  and 
Hippolytus  engaged  in  conversation  within  doors.  She  invites 
the  chorus  in  the  orchestra  near  by  to  join  her  in  Hstening  at  the 
door — a  proposal  which  for  obvious  dramatic  reasons  the  cho- 
reutae  cannot  accept;    but  her  own  cries  and  exclamations  of 


242  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

despair  as  she  listens  stir  the  audience  much  more  profoundly 
than  the  conversation  itself  could  have  done.  Thus  the  main 
portion  of  the  dialogue  between  Hippolytus  and  the  slave  is 
supposed  to  take  place  indoors.  It  is  concluded  before  the  house, 
the  two  interlocutors  entering  the  stage  at  vs.  600. 

Still  again,  the  dramatists  of  New  Comedy  were  fond  of 
representing  a  character  in  the  act  of  passing  through  a  doorway 
and  shouting  back  parting  injunctions  to  those  within — an 
artifice  which  is  sufficiently  transparent  and  is  justly  ridiculed 
in  Terence's  Andrian  Girl.  A  nurse  has  been  summoned  in  a 
confinement  case  and  issues  her  final  instructions  while  leaving 
the  house.  Simo,  who  thinks  no  child  has  been  born  and  that 
it  is  all  a  trick  to  deceive  him,  turns  fiercely  upon  the  scheming 
slave  at  his  side:  "Who  that  knows  you  would  not  believe  this 
to  be  the  product  of  your  brain  ?  She  did  not  tell  what  must  be 
done  for  the  mother  in  her  presence;  but  after  taking  her  depar- 
ture she  screams  from  the  street  to  the  attendants  within.  O 
Davus,  do  you  scorn  me  so?  Pray  do  I  seem  so  suitable  a 
victim  for  you  to  beguile  with  such  transparent  stratagems? 
You  ought  to  work  out  the  details  of  your  plots  more  exactly, 
so  that  I  might  at  least  seem  to  be  feared  in  case  I  learned  the 
truth"  (vss.  489  ff.).  Be  it  noted,  however,  that  such  a  stickler 
for  reahsm  as  Ibsen  occasionally  made  use  of  this  same  device 
(cf.  Pillars  of  Society,  Acts  II  and  III).  A  close  parallel  occurs 
in  Aristophanes'  AcharnianSj  vss.  1003  ff. 

As  a  final  illustration  of  the  artificiahty  of  the  exterior  scene 

I  may  refer  to  the  manner  in  which  characters  are  brusquely 

called  out  of  their  homes  to  meet  the  demands  of  the  dramatic 

situation.     Thus  in  Euripides'  Iphigenia  at  Aulis  a  messenger 

enters  and  unceremoniously  shouts  to  his  queen  within  doors: 

Daughter  of  Tyndareus,  Clytemnestra,  come 
Forth  from  the  tent,  that  thou  mayst  hear  my  tale. 

[Vss.  1532  f.;  Way's  translation], 

and  in  Euripides'  Children  of  Heracles,  lolaus  calls: 
Alcmene,  mother  of  a  hero-son, 
Come  forth,  give  ear  to  these  most  welcome  words. 

[Vss.  642  f.;  Way's  translation] 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS  243 

To  judge  by  such  a  dramatic  expedient,  the  front  walls  of  ancient 
houses  must  have  been  pretty  thin  l^  It  is  interesting  to  contrast 
the  uproar  which  is  required  in  Shakespeare's  Othello  (Act  I, 
scene  i)  before  Brabantio  can  be  brought  to  his  window.  Per- 
haps the  most  amusing  instance  of  this  convention  occurs  in 
Plautus'  Braggart  Captain.  In  that  play  a  slave  had  to  be 
deluded  into  believing  that  two  women  of  identical  appearance 
hved  in  adjoining  houses.  Accordingly  he  is  first  sent  into  one 
house  and  then  into  the  other,  while  directions  are  shouted  to 
the  one  woman  in  question  to  move  back  and  forth  by  means 
of  a  secret  passage  so  as  always  to  meet  him  (vss.  523  fif.). 
This  of  course  presupposes  that  the  walls  will  be  thin  enough 
for  the  woman  to  hear  through  but  too  thick  for  the  slave 
to  do  so ! 

The  publicity  thus  inevitably  attending  conversations  of  the 
most  private  nature  was  rendered  still  more  incongruous  by  the 
constant  presence  of  the  chorus;  but  this  topic  has  already  been 
treated  on  pages  154-57,  above. 

Whether  the  fifth-century  theater  was  provided  with  a  drop 
curtain  has  often  been  discussed.  I  am  inchned  to  think  there 
is  no  conclusive  evidence  for  the  constant  and  regular  use  of  one. 
The  considerations  upon  which  the  argument  mainly  rests  are 
a  priori.  That  is  to  say,  in  several  Greek  plays  the  actors  must 
arrange  themselves  and  be  in  position  before  the  action  begins. 
This  is  the  situation  in  Euripides'  Orestes  and  Aristophanes' 
Clouds  (see  p.  238,  above).  Did  Orestes  take  to  his  sick  bed  in 
full  view  of  the  assembled  audience  ?  But  he  is  said  (cf .  vs.  39) 
aheady  to  have  been  there  for  five  days!  And  though  the 
action  of  the  Clouds  begins  just  before  dawn,  Strepsiades  and  his 
son  are  supposed  to  have  lain  before  the  house  all  night.  In  such 
matters  we  must  not  permit  our  own  prepossessions  to  mislead 
us.  In  mediaeval  drama  though  a  character  was  in  view  of  the 
audience  he  could  be  thought  of  as,  in  effect,  behind  the  scenes 
until  his  part  began.  Similarly  in  oriental  theaters  today 
performers  are  treated  as  if  they  could  put  on  the  mask  of 

'  For  another'  interpretation  cf.  Mooney,  op.  cit.,  p.  19  and  n.  13. 


244  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

invisibility.  The  only  standing  concession  which  I  can  make 
to  modern  feeling  consists  in  granting  that  the  proscenium 
columns  partially  screened  the  actors  from  the  audience  while 
they  were  taking  their  places.  In  my  opinion  the  nearest 
approach  to  the  use  of  a  curtain  occurs  in  Sophocles'  Ajax  and 
is  quite  exceptional.  That  hero  committed  suicide  on  the  stage, 
and  his  body  was  found  in  a  woodland  glen  (^dTros,  vs.  892)  near 
the  seashore.  I  suppose  that  the  door  in  the  front  of  one  of  the 
parascenia^  (Fig.  74)  was  left  open  to  represent  the  entrance 
to  the  glen,  and  that  around  and  behind  it  were  set  panels 
painted  to  suggest  the  woodland  coast  and  the  glen  (see  pp.  235  f., 
above).  Into  this  opening  Ajax  collapsed  as  he  fell  upon  his 
sword.  At  vs.  915,  Tecmessa  "conceals  him  wholly  with  this 
enfolding  robe."  Possibly  this  means  that  the  cloth  was 
fastened  about  the  corpse  and  across  the  doorway,  thus  enabHng 
a  mute  or  a  lay  figure  to  be  substituted  for  the  corpse  and  re- 
leasing this  actor  to  appear  as  Teucer  in  the  remainder  of  the 
play  (see  p.  174,  above).  Whatever  the  means  employed,  it  is 
certain  that  a  substitution  was  effected. 

It  has  often  been  maintained  that  the  abrupt  endings  of  so 
many  modern  plays  is  due  to  the  fact  that  we  possess  a  drop 
curtain  which  can  be  brought  down  upon  the  action  with  a  bang, 
and  that  the  quieter  endings  of,  for  example,  Elizabethan  plays 
arise  from  their  being  written  for  curtainless  theaters.  I  do 
not  entirely  disapprove  of  this  suggestion,  but  wish  to  point  out 
that  the  difference  originates,  at  least  in  part,  also  in  a  difference 
in  taste  at  different  times  and  among  different  peoples.  It  is 
true  that  the  Greeks  probably  had  no  drop  curtain  and  that  their 
dramas  usually  end  upon  a  note  of  calm.  But  the  same  kind 
of  close  is  normal  in  other  fields  of  their  literature,  where  the 
presence  or  absence  of  a  curtain  did  not  enter  into  consideration. 

'  The  Ajax  is  one  of  the  earliest  among  Sophocles'  extant  plays,  but  its  exact 
date  is  not  known.  I  have  assumed  that  it  preceded  the  introduction  of  a  pro- 
scenium about  430  B.C.  (see  p.  235,  above).  If  it  was  written  after  that  innovation, 
the  statement  in  the  text  would  have  to  be  altered  accordingly,  but  the  general 
method  of  procedure  remains  the  same  in  either  case. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS  245 

For  example,  there  is  a  distinct  tendency  for  modern  orators  to 
close  speeches  with  a  peroration  which  is  intended  to  sweep 
auditors  off  their  feet.  Not  so  in  Greek  oratory.  "Wherever 
pity,  terror,  anger,  or  any  passionate  feeling  is  uttered  or  invited, 
this  tumult  is  resolved  in  a  final  calm;  and  where  such  tumult 
has  place  in  the  peroration,  it  subsides  before  the  last  sentences 
of  all."^  The  same  situation  obtains  likewise  in  the  case  of  the 
Greek  epic  as  in  Homer's  Iliad  and  Odyssey. 

»  Cf.  Jebb,  The  Attic  Orators,  Vol.  I,  p.  ciiL 


The  unities,  sir,  are  a  completeness — 
a  kind  of  a  universal  dovetailedness  with 
regard  to  place  and  time — a  sort  of  a 
general  oneness,  if  I  may  be  allowed  to 
use  so  strong  an  expression.  I  take  those 
to  be  the  dramatic  unities,  so  far  as  I 
have  been  enabled  to  bestow  attention 
upon  them,  and  I  have  read  much  upon 
the  subject,  and  thought  much. — 
Charles  Dickens. 

CHAPTER  VI 

THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS  (CONTINUED): 

THE  UNITIES^ 

The  dramatic  unities,  three  principles  governing  the  structure 
of  drama  and  supposedly  derived  from  Aristotle's  Poetics,  are  a 
subject  of  perennial  interest.  They  are  known  as  the  unities 
of  time,  place,  and  action,  respectively,  and  require  that  ''the 
action  of  a  play  should  be  represented  as  occurring  in  one  place, 
within  one  day,  and  with  nothing  irrelevant  to  the  plot."  The 
essential  facts  concerning  them  were  recognized  at  least  as  long 
ago  as  the  publication  of  Lessing's  Hamhurgische  Dramaturgic 
(1767).  But  so  deep-rooted  is  the  popular  impression  that  the 
Greeks  formulated  these  rules  arbitrarily  and  observed  them 
slavishly  that  no  attempt  to  state  the  true  situation  can  be 
superfluous.  The  current  doctrine  is  based  on  the  fact  that  the 
classic  dramatists  in  France  and  Italy  blindly  obeyed  the  rules 
as  a  heritage  of  the  past,  without  regard  to  the  demands  of  the 
theater  at  their  own  disposal;  and,  consequently,  the  inference 
has  been  easily  and  naturally  drawn  that  the  ancient  practice 
was  equally  irrational. 

'  In  addition  to  the  works  mentioned  on  pp.  xvii  andxxf.  and  the  bibliography 
listed  on  pp.  57-59,  above,  cf.  Campbell,  Classical  Review,  IV  (1890),  303  ff.;  Verrall 
in  his  edition  of  Euripides'  Ion  (1890),  pp.  xlviiiff.;  Krause,  Quaestiones  Aris- 
tophaneae  Scaenicae  (1903);  Kent,  "The  Time  Element  in  the  Greek  Drama," 
Transactions  of  the  American  Philological  Association,  XXXVII  (1906),  39  ff.; 
Felsch,  Quibus  Artificiis  Adhibitis  Poetae  Tragici  Graeci  Unilates  Illas  et  Temporis 
et  Loci  Obscrvaverint  (1907);  Polczj'k,  De  Unitatibus  et  Loci  et  Temporis  in  Nova 
Comoedia  Observatis  (1909);  Marek,  De  Temporis  et  Loci  Unitatibus  a  Seneca 
Tragico  Observatis  (1909);  Wolf,  Die  Bezeichnung  von  Ort  und  Zeit  in  der  attischen 
Tragodie  (191 1);  Butcher,  Aristotle^ s  Theory  of  Poetry  and  Fine  Art*  (191 1), 
pp.  274  ff.;  Brasse,  Quatenus  in  Fabulis  Plautinis  et  Loci  et  Temporis  Unitatibus 
Species  Veritatis  Neglegatur  (1914) ;  and  Manning,  A  Study  of  Archaism  in  Euripides 
(1916). 

246 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS  247 

But  in  the  Greek  theater,  where  there  was  no  drop  curtain, 
no  scenery  to  shift,  and  a  chorus  almost  continuously  present,  a 
change  of  scene  was  difficult  to  indicate  visually.  Nevertheless 
Aristotle  nowhere  mentions  the  unity  of  place,  and  the  Greek 
dramatists  not  infrequently  violate  it.  The  most  familiar 
instances  occur  in  Aeschylus'  Eumenides  and  Sophocles'  Ajax. 
The  former  play  opens  at  the  temple  of  Apollo  in  Delphi,  whither 
the  avenging  Furies  have  pursued  Orestes  after  his  mother's 
murder.  During  a  momentary  lapse  from  their  watchfulness 
Orestes  makes  his  escape,  but  the  Furies  soon  awaken  and  take 
up  the  trail  once  more.  The  scene  is  thus  left  entirely  vacant 
(vs.  234)  and  is  supposed  to  change  to  Athens,  where  all  parties 
presently  appear  for  the  famous  trial  before  the  Council  of  the 
Areopagus.  The  beginning  of  the  latter  play  takes  place  before 
Ajax'  tent,  and  Sophocles  wished  to  introduce  the  very  unusual 
motive  of  having  a  scene  of  violence  enacted  before  the  audience. 
As  the  presence  of  the  chorus  was  an  insuperable  obstacle  to  such 
a  deed,  Ajax  was  allowed  to  leave  the  scene  and,  suspicion  being 
soon  aroused,  the  chorus  was  sent  in  search  of  him  (vs.  814). 
Thus,  the  scene  is  again  entirely  deserted  by  both  actors  and 
chorus,  and  Ajax  returns,  not  to  his  tent,  but  to  some  lonely  spot 
near  the  seashore  (see  pp.  129  and  244,  above).  This  was  by  far 
the  most  natural  and  logical  method  of  leading  up  to  a  change  of 
scene,  was  infinitely  superior  to  Shakespeare's  practice  in  King 
Henry  V,  where  Chorus  is  introduced  in  the  prologue  of  each  act 
to  acquaint  the  spectators  with  the  scene  of  the  succeeding  action, 
but  was  so  difficult  to  motivate  that  only  some  half  a  dozen 
examples  are  known  to  us  in  the  whole  Greek  drama.  On  the 
other  hand,  such  a  technical  device  was  usually  not  well  adapted 
to  represent  considerable  shifts  of  scene,  since  it  would  seem 
unnatural  for  so  large  a  body  of  persons  as  the  chorus  always  to 
accompany  the  dramatic  characters  to  widely  separated  localities. 
To  this  general  restriction,  however,  the  Eumenides  furnishes  a 
brilliant  exception,  because  it  was  the  especial  duty  of  the  Furies 
to  track  the  guilty  Orestes  wherever  he  might  flee.  In  Old 
Comedy,  ever  fantastic  and  intentionally  impossible,  greater 


248  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

freedom  was  naturally  allowed  than  in  tragedy,  so  that  in 
Aristophanes'  Frogs  no  less  than  five  dififerent  scenes  are 
successively  required  (see  pp.  88-90,  above). 

At  the  same  time  the  need  of  such  scene-shifting  was  largely 
obviated  by  the  arbitrary  placing  of  almost  all  scenes  before  a 
building,  by  the  exclusion  of  interior  scenes,  and  by  the  various 
devices  substituted  therefor  (see  pp.  237-42,  above).  In  particu- 
lar the  use  of  the  messenger's  speech  enabled  dramatists  to  bring 
indirectly  before  their  audiences  events  which  had  taken  place, 
not  merely  in  the  scene-house  interior,  but  at  far  distant  spots. 
Very  commonly  the  unity  of  place  was  observed  by  convention- 
ally bringing  together  as  close  neighbors  structures  or  localities 
which  would  actually  be  separated  by  considerable  intervals. 
Thus  the  murderers  of  Agamemnon  would  not  wish  his  grave 
to  stare  them  in  the  face  and  to  remind  their  subjects  of  their 
crime;  nevertheless  in  Aeschylus'  Libation-Bearers  palace  and 
tomb  stand  side  by  side.  Likewise  in  Euripides'  Helen,  King 
Theoclymenus  has  buried  his  father  in  front  of  his  palace.  Now 
these  arrangements  are  not  to  be  interpreted  in  the  light  of  the 
prehistoric  custom  of  placing  the  dead  within  the  house  or  before 
its  threshold.  It  is  purely  a  theatrical  convention,  and  Euripides 
shows  what  he  thought  of  it  by  deeming  it  necessary  to  put  an 
excuse  on  the  Egyptian  king's  lips : 

Hail,  my  sire's  tomb! — for  at  my  palace-gate, 
Proteus,  I  buried  thee,  to  greet  thee  so; 
Still  as  I  enter  and  pass  forth  mine  halls, 
Thee,  father,  I  thy  son  Theoclymenus  haiL 

[Vss.  1 165  ff.;  Way's  translation] 

Many  similar  instances  of  incongruous  juxtaposition  in  Greek 
drama  can  be  cited,  and  those  who  remember  the  use  of  the 
continuous  set  in  mediaeval  theaters  will  feel  no  surprise. 

Slightly  different  but  no  less  efficacious  is  the  method  of 
procedure  in  the  Persians.  For  dramatic  effect  Aeschylus 
wished  to  introduce  the  ghost  of  Darius.  But  according  to 
ancient  notions  on  the  subject  ghosts  do  not  normally  wander 
far  from  their  tombs,  and  the  real  grave  of  Darius  was  at 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS  249 

Persepolis.  Furthermore,  under  the  conditions  supposed  the 
Persian  elders,  the  royal  messenger,  and  Xerxes  himself  would 
not  naturally  resort  thither.  Consequently,  without  the  slight- 
est compunction,  Aeschylus  transferred  the  dead  monarch's 
tomb  to  Susa! 

Sometimes  the  unity  of  place  was  observed  by  causing  a 
character  to  come  to  a  spot  to  which  he  would  not  naturally 
resort.  The  scene  of  Euripides'  PJioenician  Maids,  for  instance, 
is  laid  in  Thebes,  and  the  poet  wished  to  show  a  meeting  of  the 
Theban  king  and  his  brother.  Since  the  latter  is  considered  a 
traitor  and  the  enemy  of  his  country,  is  in  banishment  and 
at  the  head  of  an  invading  army,  such  a  meeting  in  real  life 
would  almost  inevitably  be  held  between  the  hostile  lines.  Yet 
Polynices  is  forced  to  intrust  his  head  to  the  lion's  jaws  and 
enter  the  city.  He  expresses  his  own  misgivings  in  vss.  261  ff., 
concluding : 

Yet  do  I  trust  my  mother — and  mistrust, — • 
Who  drew  me  to  come  hither  under  truce. 

[Vss.  272  f.;  Way's  translation] 

At  vss.  357  ff.  he  alludes  to  the  matter  once  more. 

Similarly,  a  character  is  oftentimes  forced  to  remain  upon 
the  scene  of  action  when  he  would  not  naturally  do  so.  Thus, 
in  Plautus*  Menaechmi,  owing  to  a  failure  to  distinguish 
Menaechmus  I  from  his  brother,  his  father-in-law  and  a  physi- 
cian consider  him  insane  and  make  arrangements,  in  his  hearing, 
for  his  apprehension.  Notwithstanding,  when  they  both  leave 
the  stage  at  vs.  956  he  makes  no  attempt  to  escape — an  act 
which  would  transfer  the  next  two  scenes  elsewhere — but  un- 
concernedly awaits  developments. 

Finally  I  may  mention  one  especially  amusing  artifice.  In 
Euripides'  Iphigenia  among  the  Taurians,  Orestes  has  left  the 
scene  and  is  now  supposed  to  be  some  distance  away.  Not- 
withstanding, Athena  addresses  him  and  apologetically  adds: 
"For,  though  absent,  you  can  hear  my  voice,  since  I  am  a 
goddess"  (vs.  1447).  The  same  situation  recurs,  without 
apology,  at  vs.  1462  and  in  Euripides'  Helen,  vss.  1662  ff. 


250 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


Likewise,  the  unity  of  time  arose,  not  from  the  whim  of 
ancient  writers,  but  from  the  same  theatrical  arrangements  which 
resulted  in  the  unity  of  place,  viz.,  the  absence  of  a  drop  curtain 
and  the  continuous  presence  of  the  chorus.  Under  these  con- 
ditions an  intermission  for  the  imaginary  lapse  of  time  could  be 
secured  only  by  the  withdrawal  of  the  chorus,  and  without  such 
intermissions  the  constant  and  long-continued  presence  of  the 
same  persons  in  the  same  place  without  food  or  slumber  was  in 
danger  of  becoming  an  absurdity.  Now  we  have  seen  how 
difficult  it  was  to  invent  motives  for  the  successive  reappearances 
of  actors;  to  motivate  the  movements  of  a  body  of  twelve  (fifteen) 
tragic  or  twenty-four  comic  choreutae  was  naturally  still  more 
difficult  (see  pp.  229-33  and  150-52,  above).  Consequently  the 
chorus  is  rarely  removed  from  the  stage  during  the  action.  Two 
instances  have  already  been  mentioned  (p.  247,  above).  In  the 
Ajax  advantage  is  taken  of  the  withdrawal  to  change  the  scene 
slightly;  naturally  a  slight  interval  of  time  is  also  supposed  to 
elapse,  but  in  this  instance  this  is  negligible  and  without  sig- 
nificance. In  the  Eumenides  the  case  is  different.  Here  the 
scene  is  not  shifted  a  few  rods  merely  but  from  Delphi  clear  to 
Athens.  As  the  crow  flies  this  was  a  distance  of  about  eighty 
miles  and,  in  view  of  the  physical  conditions  and  ancient  methods 
of  travel,  would  require  two  or  three  days  to  traverse.  Accord- 
ingly a  considerable  lacuna  in  the  dramatic  time  of  the  play 
must  be  assumed.  What  is  still  more  remarkable  is  that,  except 
for  the  empty  stage,  the  spectators  are  given  nothing  to  help 
*' digest  the  abuse  of  distance."  At  vs.  80  Apollo  dispatches 
Orestes  to  the  city  of  Pallas,  at  vs.  179  he  begins  to  drive  the 
chorus  of  Furies  from  his  shrine,  at  vs.  234  he  leaves  the  stage 
and  the  scene  is  empty.  Up  to  this  point  we  are  still  at  Delphi. 
In  the  very  next  verse  (235)  Orestes  rushes  into  the  theater  and 
exclaims,  "0  queen  Athena,  I  come  at  the  bidding  of  Loxias." 
He  has  reached  Athens !  In  Euripides'  Alcestis  the  chorus  forms 
part  of  the  queen's  funeral  cortege  and  is  absent  during  vss. 
747-860.  Although  it  is  not  usually  so  regarded  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that  there  is  a  slight  change  of  scene  here  (see  p.  235, 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS  251 

above) ;  there  is  also  a  slight  condensation  of  time,  but  neither 
constitutes  a  serious  violation  of  these  unities.  This  is  one  of  the 
rare  cases  where  the  withdrawal  of  the  chorus  resulted  naturally 
from  the  normal  development  of  the  plot.  For  if  the  choreutae 
Jiad  been  present  when  Heracles  announced  his  intention  of 
rescuing  Alcestis  from  death  (vss.  840  S.)  the  poet  must  have 
invented  a  reason  for  their  not  reporting  this  news  to  Admetus 
or  have  spoiled  certain  features  of  the  finale.  It  was  much 
simpler  to  avoid  the  difficulty  by  allowing  the  chorus  to  do  the 
natural  thing.  In  the  following  instances  apparently  no  change 
of  scene  or  undue  compression  of  time  is  involved.  In  Euripides' 
Helen  (vs.  385)  the  chorus  accompany  their  mistress  inside  the 
palace  to  consult  the  seeress  Theonoe  and  re-enter  at  vs.  515. 
The  only  advantage  that  seems  to  accrue  from  this  maneuver 
is  to  prolong  Menelaus'  uncertainty  as  to  the  identity  of  his 
newly  recovered  wife.  In  Aristophanes'  Women  in  Council 
(vs.  311)  the  women  of  the  chorus,  disguised  as  men,  leave  for 
the  assembly  in  order  to  vote  the  management  of  the  state  into 
their  own  hands,  returning  at  vs.  478.  Unless  the  playwright 
wished  to  have  the  assembly  scene  enacted  before  the  audience 
he  had  to  withdraw  the  chorus.  As  it  is  their  doings  are  reported 
by  a  messenger  (Chremes)  in  vss.  376  £f.  In  the  pseudo- 
Euripidean  Rhesus  the  chorus  is  absent  during  vss.  565-674,  being 
sent  in  front  of  the  camp  to  receive  Dolon  (cf.  vss.  522  ff.).  The 
presence  of  Trojan  guards  would  have  prevented  the  intervening 
scene  between  the  Greek  marauders,  Odysseus  and  Diomedes. 
It  will  be  noted  how  few  are  the  instances  of  the  withdrawal 
of  the  chorus  in  the  extant  plays  and  that  the  observance  of  the 
unities  figures  in  just  half  of  them.  In  New  Comedy  the  chorus 
appeared  only  between  acts  (see  p.  145)  and  it  would  have  been 
feasible  to  assume  a  lacuna  several  times  in  each  play.  That 
this  was  not  done  was  probably  due  to  the  fact  that  the  other 
practice  had  become  stereotyped  and  that  concentration  of 
action  resulted  in  greater  unity  of  plot.  Sometimes  the  stage 
is  left  empty  before  the  entrance  of  the  chorus  by  the  retirement  of 
all  the  actors  on  the  scene  either  between  the  prologue  and  the 


252 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


parodus  or  between  monologues  (or  dialogues)  in  the  prologue. 
Euripides'  Alcestis  (vs.  77)  furnishes  an  example  of  the  former 
and  his  Iphigenia  among  the  Taurians  (vs.  66)  of  the  latter.  So 
far  as  I  have  observed  such  pauses  are  not  made  use  of  to 
accelerate  the  time  unduly. 

Since  it  was  not  often  possible  to  suspend  the  audience's 
sense  of  time  by  removing  the  chorus,  the  poets  had  recourse 
to  the  next  best  expedient,  the  choral  odes.  Inasmuch  as  several 
of  these  occurred  in  every  play,  this  artifice  was  far  more  avail- 
able than  the  other.  In  many  respects  the  chorus  moved  upon  a 
different  plane  from  the  actors,  and  we  are  now  dealing  with  one 
of  these  differences.  As  Professor  Butcher  expressed  it:  "The 
interval  covered  by  a  choral  ode  is  one  whose  value  is  just  what 
the  poet  chooses  to  make  it.  While  the  time  occupied  by  the 
dialogue  has  a  relation  more  or  less  exact  to  real  time,  the  choral 
lyrics  suspend  the  outward  action  of  the  play  and  carry  us  still 
farther  away  from  the  world  of  reality.  What  happens  in  the 
interval  cannot  be  measured  by  any  ordinary  reckoning;  it  is 
much  or  little  as  the  needs  of  the  piece  demand.  A  change  of 
place  directly  obtrudes  itself  on  the  senses,  but  time  is  only  what 
it  appears  to  the  mind.  The  imagination  travels  easily  over 
many  hours ;  and  in  the  Greek  drama  the  time  that  elapses  during 
the  songs  of  the  chorus  is  entirely  ideahzed"  {op.  cit.,  p.  293). 
Thus  the  choral  songs  were  roughly  equivalent  to  the  modern 
intermission,  and  after  them  the  action  is  often  farther  advanced 
than  the  actual  time  required  for  chanting  them  would  warrant. 
For  example,  during  a  single  stasimon  of  Aeschylus'  Suppliants 
(vss.  524-99)  the  Argive  king  must  leave  the  scene,  summon  his 
subjects  to  pubhc  assembly,  state  the  object  of  the  meeting,  and 
allow  discussion  before  the  final  vote — all  in  time  for  Danaus  to 
report  the  people's  decision  at  the  beginning  of  the  following 
episode !  An  analogy  to  ancient  practice  occurs  in  Shakespeare's 
The  Winter's  Tale,  where  Time  as  Chorus  announces  the  passage 
of  sixteen  years  between  Acts  III  and  IV. 

But  at  the  same  time  that  the  chorus  conferred  this  liberty 
it  restricted  it.     The  presence  of  such  a  body  of  performers  at 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS  253 

all  the  scenes  of  a  play  could  seldom  be  entirely  natural.  Yet 
that  the  same  persons  should  be  found  standing  about,  in  the 
same  place,  at  various  intervals  during  the  day  is  conceivable, 
though  it  does  not  often  happen.  But  that  they  should  be  found 
there  at  every  moment  chosen  for  representation  during  weeks 
or  months  or  years  is  inconceivable  and  ridiculous.  Only  by 
shortening  the  supposed  action  of  the  piece  and  the  supposed 
lacunae  in  the  plot  could  the  convention  be  tolerated  at  all. 
However,  Professor  Verrall  was  lacking  in  historical  imagination 
when  he  maintained  that  "the  point  at  which  the  discrepancy 
between  the  facts  presented  and  the  natural  facts  began  to  be 
flagrant  and  intolerable  was  when  the  audience  were  told  to 
pass  in  imagination  from  day  to  day.  Night  is  the  great  natural 
interrupter  of  actions  and  changer  of  situations"  {op.  ciL,  p.  1). 
To  the  spoiled  theatergoer  of  today  this  would  seem  to  be  true. 
But  the  ancient  drama  knew  no  lighting  effects  (see  p.  2  24,  above) . 
On  the  stage  day  and  night  looked  the  same  to  them.  Scenes 
at  midday,  in  the  darkness  of  night,  in  the  gloom  of  Hades,  were 
alike  enacted  in  the  glare  of  the  sun.  Ostensibly  the  entire 
action  of  the  anonymous  Rhesus  and  much  of  that  in  Euripides' 
Cyclops  fell  within  the  hours  of  night,  and  characters  frequently 
addressed  the  heavenly  constellations  in  (actual)  daylight.  So 
far  were  the  playwrights  from  avoiding  the  discrepancy  involved 
in  passing  from  one  day  to  another  that  in  Terence's  translation 
of  Menander's  Self -Tormentor,  when  a  night  is  supposed  to 
elapse  between  Acts  II  and  III,  attention  is  deliberately  called 
to  it  by  Chremes'  words,  "It  is  beginning  to  grow  light  here 
now"  (vs.  410).  In  my  opinion  this  play  extends  over  about  as 
much  time  as  the  conditions  which  obtained  in  ancient  drama 
would  normally  allow;  and  it  should  be  noted  that  it  does  not 
exceed  the  twenty-four  hours  permitted  by  the  unity  of  time. 
In  the  third  place,  perhaps  it  is  unnecessary  to  point  out  that 
acceleration  of  time  is  possible  in  all  drama  quite  apart  from  an 
empty  stage  or  choral  songs.  Instances  can  be  cited  even  from 
dramatists  who  owned  no  allegiance  to  the  unities — note,  for 
example,  the  striking  of  the  half -hour  every  twenty  or  twenty-five 


254  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

Knes  at  the  close  of  Marlowe's  Doctor  Faustus.  In  Aristophanes' 
Plutus  the  bHnd  god  is  escorted  from  the  stage  for  a  night's 
treatment  in  the  temple  of  Asclepius  (vs.  626),  the  chorus  remain- 
ing in  its  place  but  apparently  not  singing/  At  the  very  next 
verse  one  of  the  escort  returns  to  announce  that  Plutus  has 
recovered  his  sight  and  to  relate  the  events  of  the  night!  But 
here  again,  despite  the  transition  from  one  day  to  another,  the 
action  does  not  exceed  twenty-four  hours.  In  the  same  writer's 
Acharnians,  Amphitheus  goes  from  Athens  to  Sparta  and  returns 
again  during  the  dialogue  contained  between  vss.  133  and  174. 
There  is  no  hint,  however,  that  his  reappearance  is  premature  or 
that  his  trip  would  occupy  more  than  the  apparent  space 
allotted  it. 

But  neither  the  ordinary  acceleration  of  time  in  drama  nor 
the  use  of  stasima  nor  yet  the  stage  left  empty  by  the  retirement 
of  chorus  and  actors  tells  the  whole  story  of  Greek  practice. 
Nowadays  the  playbill  clearly  informs  us  how  much  time  has 
elapsed  between  acts,  and  the  piece  is  constructed  accordingly. 
If  a  character  in  the  third  act  has  occasion  to  refer  to  something 
which  occurred  in  the  first  act  ten  years  or  so  ago  he  must  not 
speak  of  it  as  if  it  happened  yesterday.  Not  so  in  ancient  drama. 
The  Greek  audiences  had  no  playbills,  and  even  the  introductions 
to  Greek  plays  prepared  by  Alexandrian  scholars  contained  no 
such  information  as  this.  I  fancy  that  the  Greek  dramatist 
never  laid  his  finger  upon  a  given  line  and  said:  "Here  we  must 
assume  a  lapse  of  several  days,  or  months,  or  years."  The 
events  of  a  drama,  regardless  of  actuahties,  were  conventionally 
treated  as  occupying  no  more  than  twenty-four  hours.  A  like 
convention  was  customary  in  the  Greek  epic:  when  once  a 
Homeric  character  was  given  a  definite  age  or  form  he  main- 
tained each  unchanged  throughout.^  For  example,  Telemachus 
is  introduced  in  the  first  book  of  the  Odyssey  as  a  young  man  just 
reaching  his  majority,  ready  and  anxious  to  assume  the  duties  of 

I  XOPOT  is  printed  at  this  point  in  most  editions  but  occurs  in  no  manuscript 
(see  p.  14s,  above);  it  has  been  inserted  by  the  editors. 
*  Cf.  Scott,  Classical  Philology,  VIII  (1913),  453  ff. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS  255 

manhood;  but  nine  years  before,  when  he  could  not  have  been 
more  than  twelve  years  of  age,  he  is  spoken  of  as  just  as  old  and 
as  already  a  man  among  men  (cf.  Book  xi,  vss,  185  f.  and  449). 
Again,  in  the  third  book  of  the  Iliad,  Helen  is  pictured  in  the 
prime  of  youth  and  beauty;  ten  years  later  and  thirty  years 
after  her  elopement  with  Paris  she  is  likened  to  the  same  goddess 
as  is  the  Maiden  Nausicaa  (cf.  Odyssey  iv.  121  f.  and  vi.  102  flf.). 
In  Greek  drama  time  relations  are  similarly  ignored.  At  the 
opening  of  Aeschylus'  Agamemnon  the  watchman  sights  the 
signal  fire  which  announces  the  capture  of  Troy,  and  within  a 
few  hundred  lines  Agamemnon  has  finished  the  sack,  traversed 
the  Aegean,  and  appeared  before  his  palace!  No  hint  is  given, 
however,  that  there  is  anything  unusual  about  all  this;  not  a 
word^  indicates  that  the  action  is  disconnected  at  any  point. 
This  is  the  most  flagrant  instance,  and  I  conceive  that  it  is 
to  be  interpreted  as  follows :  The  performance  of  Greek  drama 
in  the  fifth  century  was  continuous  in  the  sense  that  with  negli- 
gible exceptions  (see  pp.  250  f.,  above)  actors  or  chorus  or  both 
were  constantly  before  the  audience.  Notice  that  this  is  not 
the  same  as  saying  that  the  time  of  the  plays  was  continuous. 
When  critically  examined  it  is  found  to  have  been  interrupted 
by  numerous  gaps,  as  we  have  already  seen  and  shall  see  again. 
But  the  continuity  of  performance  gave  a  semblance  of  continuity 
also  to  the  action.  Therefore  when  a  modern  playwright  Hke 
Pinero  restricts  his  action  to  one  day  and  represents  the  lapse 
of  several  hours  by  the  fall  of  the  curtain  between  acts,  he  does 
not  thereby  observe  the  unity  of  time  in  the  Greek  sense.  The 
dramatic  events  were  tacitly  treated  by  the  poets  as  if  they 
occupied  no  more  than  a  day  and  were  so  accepted  by  the  public. 
By  "tacitly"  I  mean  that  if  such  crowding  involved  a  physical 
or  moral  impossibihty  the  dramatists  never  stooped  to  apologize 
or  explain  but  placed  their  events  in  juxtaposition  just  the  same. 
In  Plautus'  Captives,  Philocrates  travels  from  Aetolia  (the  scene 
of  action)  to  Elis  and  back  again  between  vss.  460  and  768.     In 

I  ndXat  in  vs.  587  is  entirely  subjective;  cf.  Conrad,  The  Technique  ofConlinuous 

Action  in  Roman  Comedy  (1915),  pp.  22  fiE. 


256  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

real  life  such  a  trip  would  have  required  several  days,  but  in  the 
play  it  consumes  less  than  one!  Do  we  positively  know  this  ? 
Beyond  the  shadow  of  a  doubt.  A  parasite  is  introduced  at 
intervals  during  the  play  scheming  to  be  invited  to  a  meal. 
He  is  first  seen  at  vs.  69  and  does  not  get  a  satisfactory  invitation 
until  vs.  897.  A  more  detailed  statement  would  show  conclu- 
sively that  the  same  day's  meal  is  under  discussion  throughout. 
Moreover,  this  is  no  mere  lapsus  calami,  such  as  a  few  phrases 
which  are  found  in  an  opposite  sense,*  but  is  unmistakable  in  its 
import  and  is  closely  interwoven  with  the  plot.  If  anyone  feels 
amazed  at  so  dehberate  a  contradiction  he  may  console  himself 
with  a  study  of  the  use  of  "double  time"  in  Shakespeare.  It 
would  be  possible,  but  is  quite  unnecessary,  to  cite  other  plays 
in  which  restriction  of  time  to  a  single  day  is  indicated  with 
sufficient  exactness.  Of  course  the  Greek  dramatists  did  not 
consistently  introduce  references  to  the  precise  date  or  to  the 
time  of  day.  In  general  they  were  wise  enough  to  act  upon  the 
principle  which  Corneille^  expressed  as  follows:  "Above  all  I 
would  leave  the  length  of  the  action  to  the  imagination  of  the 
hearers,  and  never  determine  the  time,  if  the  subject  does  not 

require  it What  need  is  there  to  mark  at  the  opening 

of  the  play  that  the  sun  is  rising,  that  it  is  noon  at  the  third 
act,  and  sunset  at  the  end  of  the  last?" 

It  is  somewhat  remarkable  that  Professor  Verrall,  who  fuUy 
recognized  the  dependence  of  this  unity  upon  local  conditions 
and  published  eminently  sensible  observations  on  the  subject, 
nevertheless  felt  constrained  to  challenge  the  obvious  inter- 
pretation of  two  plays  in  which  a  glaring  violation  of  the  unity  of 
time  occurs.  In  the  Agamemnon  he  supposed  the  watchman  and 
the  populace  (including  the  chorus)  to  be  misinformed  as  to  the 
meaning  of  the  beacon  and  that  it  really  served  to  Clytemnestra, 
Aegisthus,  and  their  supporters  as  a  warning  of  Agamemnon's 

'  For  example,  the  slips  which  occur  in  Aristophanes'  Lysisiraia  (vss.  725 
and  881). 

'  Cf .  Discours  des  trois  unites,  I,  113  f.  (Regnier's  edition),  quoted  by 
Butcher,  op.  cit.,  pp.  294  f. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS  257 

being  close  at  hand!  His  elucidation  of  Euripides'  Andromache 
was  still  more  ingenious  and  complicated/  But  to  bolster  up 
such  interpretations  Mr.  Verrall  ought  to  have  explained  away 
all  similar  instances  as  well — to  explain,  for  example,  how  in 
Euripides'  Suppliants  an  Attic  army  can  march  from  Eleusis  to 
the  vicinity  of  Thebes  and  fight  a  battle  there,  and  how  tidings 
of  the  victory  can  be  brought  back  to  Eleusis,  all  between  vss. 
598  and  634,  which,  as  Dryden^  expressed  it,  "is  not  for  every 
mile  a  verse."  Nevertheless  not  the  slightest  attention  is  paid 
to  such  patent  impossibilities,  and  in  every  case  the  whole  action 
is  unmistakably  supposed  to  fall  within  a  day. 

In  view  of  the  foregoing  it  is  not  surprising  that  Aristotle 
does  mention  the  unity  of  time,  though  only  incidentally.  His 
exact  language  is:  "Tragedy  and  epic  differ,  again,  in  their 
length :  for  tragedy  endeavors,  so  far  as  possible,  to  keep  within 
a  single  circuit  of  the  sun  (7repto5os  riKiov),  or  but  slightly  to 
exceed  this  Hmit;  whereas  the  epic  action  has  no  Hmits  of  time."* 
"Endeavors"  (Tretparat)  was  mistranslated  as  doit  by  some 
French  writers.  Aristotle  rather  commends  the  unity  of  time 
as  a  rough  generalization  which  works  out  well  in  practice  than 
enjoins  it  as  an  invariable  rule.  Actually  the  restriction  was 
further  reduced,  in  most  cases,  to  the  hours  of  daylight,  and 
Dacier  even  maintained  that  TreptoSos  17X101;  means  no  more  than 
twelve  hours.  But  Aristophanes'  Plutus  and  Terence's  Self- 
Tormentor  (see  pp.  253  f.,  above)  furnish  clear  examples  of  dra- 
matic action  beginning  in  the  late  afternoon  of  one  day  and  not 
concluding  until  the  next  day. 

It  remains  to  consider  some  of  the  expedients  which  the  poets 
found  useful  in  solving  the  difficulties  (both  of  time  and  place) 
caused  by  local  conditions.  In  the  first  place  the  practice  of 
writing  a  series  of  three  plays  on  the  same  general  subject  (see 
p.  198,  above)  often  enabled  the  playwright  to  distribute  his 

'  Cf.  the  introduction  to  his  edition  of  the  Agamemnon,  and  Four  Plays  of 
Euripides,  pp.  1-42. 

*  Cf,  Dramatic  Essays  (Everyman's  Library  edition),  p.  18. 
3  Cf.  Poetics  1449612-14. 


258  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

incidents  in  different  places  and  time-spheres  without  loss  of 
A  erisimilitude,  for  a  whole  trilogy  was  about  as  long  as  the  average 
modern  play,  and  each  tragedy  would  thus  correspond  to  a  single 
act  and,  since  the  chorus  was  withdrawn  at  the  close  of  each  play 
in  the  trilogy  and  its  place  taken  by  another  entirely  different, 
changes  of  time  and  place  between  plays  were  absolutely  without 
restriction.  Thus  Scythia  of  Aeschylus'  Prometheus  Bound  be- 
comes Caucasus  in  the  second  piece  in  the  trilogy,  the  Prome- 
theus Unbound;  in  the  former  was  shown  the  binding  of  the 
Titan  and  in  the  latter  his  release,  and  he  is  said  to  have  been 
bound  for  30,000  years.  All  but  two  days  of  this  time  elapses 
between  plays!  In  Aeschylus'  Orestean  trilogy  the  scene  of  the 
Agamemnon  and  Libation-Bearers  is  laid  in  Argos;  that  of  the 
Eumenides  in  Delphi  and  Athens.  Several  years  are  supposed 
to  pass  by  in  the  two  interims. 

But  even  Aeschylus  did  not  always  employ  the  trilogic  form, 
and  Sophocles  and  Euripides  rarely  did.  When,  therefore,  the 
three  or  four  plays  in  each  series  were  severally  devoted  to  utterly 
um-elated  material,  it  sometimes  became  necessary  to  bring 
almost  as  many  events  within  the  scope  of  one  play  as  would 
otherwise  be  dealt  with  in  a  whole  trilogy.  Inasmuch  as  a  large 
fraction  of  these  events  could  not  possibly  be  conceived  of  as 
taking  place  in  the  same  locality  or  within  the  same  day,  it  was 
imperative  either  to  exclude  them  or  to  include  them  in  some 
indirect  fashion.  Now  two  striking  peculiarities  of  Euripidean 
technique  were  admirably  adapted  to  help  solve  these  difficulties. 
His  prologues  regularly  take  the  form  of  a  monologue,  which, 
with  scant  regard  for  dramatic  illusion,  rehearses  the  story  of 
the  myth  up  to  the  point  where  the  play  begins.  Again,  Eu- 
ripides' dramas  frequently  terminate  with  the  epiphany  of  a 
deity.  This  device  was  the  accustomed  recourse  of  unskifful 
playwrights,  when  their  plots  had  become  complicated  beyond 
the  possibility  of  disentanglement  by  natural  means,  in  order 
that  a  god's  fiat  might  resolve  all  difficulties.  It  has  often  been 
charged  that  this  was  also  Euripides'  motive,  but  most  unjustly 
(see  pp.  293  ff.,  below).     He  rather  "wished,  by  the  help  of  a 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS  259 

divine  foreknowledge,  to  put  before  the  spectators  such  future 
events  or  unknown  circumstances  as  should  settle  their  minds, 
satisfy  all  curiosity,  and  connect  the  subject  of  the  piece  with 
subsequent  events  or  even  with  the  times  of  living  men."^ 
Thus  in  Euripides'  Andromache  the  compHcations  of  the  plot  are 
entirely  solved  before  Thetis'  appearance  at  vs.  1231,  and  she 
merely  gives  directions  for  Neoptolemus'  burial  and  prophesies 
the  future  of  Peleus,  Andromache,  and  Molossus,  and  of  the 
latter's  posterity.  When  these  two  pieces  of  technique  were 
combined  in  the  same  play,  the  prologue,  the  body  of  the  tragedy, 
and  the  epilogue  sometimes  corresponded  roughly  to  the  suc- 
cessive dramas  of  a  whole  trilogy.  This  appears  most  clearly 
in  the  case  of  Euripides'  Electra  and  Aeschylus'  Orestean  trilogy. 
The  opening  monologue  of  the  former  (vss.  1-53)  passes  in 
rapid  review  the  Greek  expedition  against  Troy,  the  murder 
of  Agamemnon,  and  the  present  fate  of  his  children.  With  the 
exception  of  the  last  item,  which  is  brought  out  in  the  second 
play  of  the  Oresteia,  these  are  the  matters  contained  in  the  pro- 
logue, which  naturally  is  comparatively  short,  and  in  the  action 
of  Aeschylus'  Agamemnon.  The  body  of  the  Electra  corresponds 
to  the  second  tragedy  in  the  trilogy,  the  Libation-Bearers.  At 
the  Electra' s  conclusion  (vs.  1238)  Castor  as  deus  ex  machina 
forecasts  among  other  things  the  acquittal  of  Orestes  at  Athens, 
which  is  the  theme  of  Aeschylus'  Eumenides.  Whatever  other 
explanations,  therefore,  may  be  advanced  for  Euripides'  pro- 
logues and  epilogues  (see  pp.  294  f.  and  299  f.,  below)  this 
consideration  must  also  be  allowed  a  certain  weight,  viz.,  that 
they  permitted  him  to  bring  events  of  the  most  diverse  nature 
within  the  scope  of  his  piece  without  violating  the  unities  of  time 
and  place. 

A  fourth  device  looking  to  the  same  ends  consisted  in  setting 
conversations  at  times  and  places  which  would  naturally  be 
different.  Even  such  a  master  of  dramatic  technique  as 
Sophocles  represented  Orestes  as  communicating  to  his  fellow- 
conspirators  the  result  of  his  inquiry  at  Delphi  only  after  they 

'  Cf.  England's  edition  of  Euripides'  Iphigenia  at  Aulis,  p.  xxvii. 


26o  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

had  reached  Argos  {Eledra,  vss.  32  ff.),  and  as  waiting  to  for- 
mulate a  definite  plan  of  action  until  they  were  in  the  most 
unfavorable  place  in  all  the  world  for  such  a  purpose — before 
Clytemnestra's  palace  (vss.  15  ff.)-  The  latter  incongruity  does 
not  occur  in  Euripides'  version  of  the  same  story  because  the 
scene  of  his  Electra  is  laid,  not  in  the  city  of  Argos,  but  before 
Electra's  hut  in  the  country.  The  device  under  consideration 
was  conveniently  supplemented  by  the  convention  that  if  two 
or  more  characters  enter  the  stage  together  no  conversation  is 
thought  of  as  passing  between  them  until  they  have  come  within 
the  hearing  of  the  audience  (see  p.  310,  below).  It  will  be  seen 
that  the  passage  just  cited  from  Sophocles'  Electra  conforms  to 
this  rule.  Another  instance  occurs  in  Euripides'  Madness  of 
Heracles,  vss.  822  ff.  Iris  appears  above  Heracles'  palace  with 
Madness,  whom  she  orders  to  incite  the  hero  to  the  murder  of  his 
children.  Madness  protests  but  is  overborne  and  forced  to 
perform  her  bidding.  Though  Iris  and  Madness  must  have 
come  a  considerable  distance  together,  all  discourse  between 
them  is  apparently  postponed  until  they  reach  their  destination. 
Furthermore,  these  instructions  would  naturally  have  been  given 
to  Madness  elsewhere  and  somewhat  earher.  In  that  case  the 
audience  must  have  lost  an  effective  scene.  The  device  dis- 
cussed in  this  paragraph  enabled  the  poet  to  circumvent  the 
unities  and  place  the  scene  before  his  audience;  and  the  con- 
vention which  I  have  mentioned  preserved  it  for  them  in  its 
entirety. 

We  have  seen  that  the  unities  of  time  and  place  are  largely  due 
to  the  striving  for  illusion  in  a  theater  comparatively  bare  of 
scenery  and  of  facilities  for  scene-shifting.  Conversely,  their 
observance  in  the  modern  theater  with  its  ample  scenic  provision 
would  naturally  miUtate  against  the  scenic  extravagance  and 
actualism  of  which  the  present-day  theatocracy  is  so  enamored. 
Thus  it  would  seem  that  the  much-abused  unities  are  not 
without  a  meaning  and  truly  artistic  tendency  even  today,  for 
some  of  the  most  significant  influences  in  contemporaneous 
staging  are  directed  against  excesses  along  these  lines.    Even 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS  26 1 

a  modern  producer,  Henry  W.  Savage,  included  the  following 
in  his  advice  to  a  young  playwright:  *'Do  not  distribute  your 
scenes  so  widely  that  you  have  one  on  an  island,  another  at 
Herald  Square,  and  a  third  at  Chicago.  Make  the  action  of  your 
play  take  place  all  in  one  day,  if  possible  "^^ — ^in  other  words 
the  unity  of  time  expressly  and  an  approximation  to  the  unity 
of  place.  Ibsen  surely  retained  no  theatrical  conventions  merely 
because  they  were  old;  yet  he  usually  observed  the  unities. 
A  recent  critic  has  written:  "Though  the  unities  of  time  and 
place  were  long  ago  exploded  as  binding  principles — indeed,  they 
never  had  any  authority  in  English  drama — yet  it  is  true  that  a 
broken-backed  action,  whether  in  time  or  space,  ought,  so  far  as 
possible,  to  be  avoided.  An  action  with  a  gap  of  twenty  years 
in  it  may  be  all  very  well  in  melodrama  and  romance,  but  scarcely 
in  higher  and  more  serious  types  of  drama. "^ 

The  unity  of  action  is  the  only  one  that  is  universal,  since  it 
alone  springs  from  the  inmost  nature  of  the  drama.  Yet  even 
here  local  conditions  make  themselves  felt.  The  modern  play- 
wright, free  (if  he  pleases  and  has  a  producer  complaisant 
enough)  to  change  the  scene  ten  times  within  a  single  act  and 
with  superior  facilities  for  motivating  entrances  and  exits, 
delights  in  shifting  different  sets  of  characters  back  and  forth 
and  thus  secures  an  alternation  of  light  and  shade,  an  inter- 
mingling of  comedy  and  tragedy  quite  beyond  the  ancient 
dramatist's  reach.  The  preceding  discussion  has  shown  the 
immobihty  of  the  ancient  theater  in  these  respects  and,  conse- 
quently, one  reason  why  the  Greeks  ruthlessly  excluded  every- 
thing that  was  not  strictly  germane  to  their  action  (see  also 
p.  201,  above). 

This  unity,  it  is  needless  to  say,  plays  an  important  part  in 
Aristotle's  Poetics.  He  recognized  that  "plot  is  the  first  essential 
and  soul  of  tragedy  and  that  character  comes  second."^  The 
most  lengthy  statement  runs  as  follows:  "Let  us  now  discuss 
the  proper  construction  of  the  plot,  as  that  is  both  the  first  and 

'  Cf.  The  Bookman,  XXX  (1909),  37. 

^  Cf.  Archer,  Play-making,  pp.  123  f.  J  Cf.  Poetics  1450038  f. 


262  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

the  most  important  thing  in  tragedy.  We  have  laid  it  down  that 
tragedy  is  an  imitation  of  an  action  that  is  complete  and  whole, 
having  a  certain  magnitude,  for  there  is  also  a  whole  that  is 
wanting  in  magnitude.  Now  a  whole  is  that  which  has  a 
beginning,  a  middle,  and  an  end.  A  beginning  is  that  which  is 
not  itself  necessarily  after  anything  else  and  after  which  some- 
thing else  naturally  is  or  comes  to  be;  an  end,  on  the  contrary, 
is  that  which  itself  naturally  follows  some  other  thing  either  as  its 
necessary  or  usual  consequent,  and  has  nothing  else  after  it; 
and  a  middle  is  that  which  is  both  itself  after  one  thing  and  has 
some  other  thing  after  it.  Accordingly,  well-constructed  plots 
must  neither  begin  nor  end  at  haphazard  points,  but  must 
conform  to  the  types  just  mentioned."^  These  principles  were 
excellently  restated  by  Lowell : 

In  a  play  we  not  only  expect  a  succession  of  scenes,  but  that  each 
scene  should  lead,  by  a  logic  more  or  less  stringent,  if  not  to  the  next,  at 
any  rate  to  something  that  is  to  follow,  and  that  all  should  contribute  their 
fraction  of  impulse  towards  the  inevitable  catastrophe.  That  is  to  say,  the 
structure  should  be  organic,  with  a  necessary  and  harmonious  connection 
and  relation  of  parts,  and  not  merely  mechanical  with  an  arbitrary  or  hap- 
hazard joining  of  one  part  to  another.  It  is  in  the  former  sense  alone  that 
any  production  can  be  called  a  work  of  art.^ 

Though  it  is  now  admitted  on  all  sides  that  the  unity  of 
action  is  the  sine  qua  non  of  dramatic  composition,  many  fail  to 
realize  the  meaning  and  extent  of  its  limitation.  Aristotle 
indicated  a  mistaken  notion  current  in  his  day,  and  hkewise  in 
ours,  in  the  following  words:  "The  unity  of  a  plot  does  not 
consist,  as  some  suppose,  in  its  having  one  man  as  its  subject. 
An  infinite  multitude  of  things  befall  that  one  man,  some  of 
which  it  is  impossible  to  reduce  to  unity,  and  so,  too,  there  are 
many  actions  of  one  man  which  cannot  be  made  to  form  one 
action.  Hence,  the  error,  as  it  appears,  of  all  the  poets  who  have 
composed  a  Heracleid,  a  Theseid,  or  similar  poems.  They  sup- 
pose that,  because  Heracles  was  one  man,  the  story  also  of 
Heracles  must  be  one  story.  "^     Freytag  discussed  the  matter 

'  Cf.  Poetics  1450&22-35. 

'  Cf.  The  Old  English  Dramatists,  III.  ^  Cf.  Poetics  1451015-22. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS  263 

with  keen  discrimination  and  exemplified  it  by  showing  how 
Shakespeare  remodeled  the  more  or  less  chaotic  story  of  Romeo 
and  Juliet's  love  into  a  unified  plot  whose  incidents  follow  one 
another  almost  as  inexorably  as  Fate.  The  passage  is  unfortu- 
nately too  long  for  quotation  here,  but  is  highly  instructive/ 

The  same  reasoning  reveals  the  shortcoming  in  Professor 
Lounsbury's  contention:  "What,  indeed,  is  the  objection  to  this 
mixture  of  the  serious  and  the  comic  in  the  same  play  ?  By  it  is 
certainly  represented,  as  it  is  not  in  pure  comedy  or  pure  tragedy, 
the  life  we  actually  live  and  the  mingled  elements  that  compose 

it As  there  was  no  question  that  sadness  and  mirth  were 

constantly  intermixed  in  real  life,  it  was  impossible  to  maintain 
that  the  illegitimacy  of  this  form  of  dramatic  composition  was 
due  to  its  improbabihty."^  The  word  "pure"  gives  away  the 
whole  case.  Aristotle  would  have  to  grant  that  Shakespeare's 
plays  are  admirable,  even  sublime;  but  he  could  hardly  admit 
that  they  were  "pure"  tragedies  or  "pure"  comedies,  however 
legitimate  in  other  respects.  They  fall  short  in  the  quahty 
which  Mr.  Albert  H.  Brown  placed  in  the  forefront  of  his  defini- 
tion: "A  great  drama  is  a  clearly  focused  picture  of  human 
conditions." 

Aristotle  also  pointed  out  that  epic  poetry  has  an  advantage 
in  that  it  can  present  many  events  simultaneously  transacted, 
while  the  drama  is  restricted  to  but  one.^  A  curious  violation 
of  this  self-evident  principle  occurred  in  a  recent  American  play. 
Toward  the  end  of  Act  II  in  Eugene  Walter's  Paid  in  Full, 
Emma  Brooks  is  disclosed  making  an  appointment  with  Captain 
Williams  over  the  telephone.  In  the  next  act  we  are  transferred 
to  Captain  Williams'  quarters,  and  the  dramatic  clock  has  in 
the  meanwhile  been  turned  back  some  fifteen  minutes,  for 
presently  the  telephone  bell  rings  and  the  same  appointment  is 
made  over  again.  In  other  words.  Act  III  partially  overlaps 
Act  II  in  time,  but  the  scene  is  different.     It  can  scarcely  be 

'  Cf .  Technique  of  the  Drama,  MacEwan's  translation^  pp.  30  ff. 
*  Cf.  Shakespeare  as  a  Dramatic  Artist  (1902),  pp.  150  f. 
^  Cf.  Poetics  1459622-28. 


264  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

denied  that  the  dramatic  situation  has  been  enhanced  by  this 
device,  but  this  gain  has  been  secured  at  the  sacrifice  of  veri- 
similitude and  dramatic  illusion.  Such  "cut-backs"  may  be  all 
very  well  in  moving  picures,  but  they  hardly  have  a  place  in 
spoken  drama. 

Thus,  the  Greek  masters  were  so  far  from  evolving  unities 
out  of  their  inner  consciousness  or  from  observing  them  invari- 
ably that  they  constantly  violated  the  unities  of  time  and  place 
in  both  letter  and  spirit.  Their  practice  throughout  simply 
reacted  to  theatrical  conditions  as  they  found  them.  It  has 
remained  for  their  successors,  whose  theater  has  for  the  most  part 
been  quite  dissimilar,  to  observe  the  unities  with  a  literalness 
and  exactness  such  as  never  characterized  the  great  dramatists 
of  Greece.  That  both  ancients  and  moderns  have  produced 
masterpieces  under  these  restrictions  is,  of  course,  beyond  dis- 
pute. In  fact,  some  of  our  most  impressive  plays  of  recent  date 
such  as  Kennedy's  Servant  in  the  House,  have  conformed  to  them. 
That  many  modern  plays  would  have  been  improved  by  observ- 
ing them  is  doubtless  also  true.  Even  so  uncompromising  an 
admirer  of  Shakespeare  as  Professor  Lounsbury^  wrote: 

Let  it  not  be  imagined,  however,  that  any  attempt  is  made  here  to  deny 
the  merit  of  modern  plays  which  observe  the  unities,  or  to  maintain  that  a 
powerful  drama  cannot  be  produced  upon  the  lines  they  prescribe.  Such 
a  contention  would  be  only  repeating  on  the  side  of  the  opponents  of  this 
doctrine  the  erroneous  assumptions  which  its  advocates  put  forth.  He  who 
ventures  to  take  a  position  so  extreme  can  hardly  escape  a  feeling  of  serious 
discomfort  if  called  upon,  in  consequence,  to  decry  the  productions  of 
Corneille,  Racine,  and  Mohere,  to  say  nothing  of  some  of  the  most  brilUant 
pieces  which  have  adorned  the  English  stage.  Nor,  furthermore,  need  it 
be  denied  that  there  are  conditions  in  which  the  observance  of  the  unities 
may  be  a  positive  advantage.  Especially  will  this  be  the  case  when  the 
characters  are  few  and  all  the  incidents  of  the  plot  are  directed  to  the 
accomplishment  of  a  single  result.  The  concentration  of  the  action  is  likely 
to  contribute,  in  such  pieces,  to  the  effect  of  the  representation.  He  who 
sets  out  to  imitate  the  simplicity  of  the  Greek  drama  will  usually  find  him- 
self disposed  to  adopt,  as  far  as  possible,  its  form.  Within  its  limitations 
great  work  can  be  accomplished  by  the  drama  which  regards  the  unities, 
and,  to  some  extent,  it  will  be  great  work  because  of  its  limitations. 

'  Cf.  op.  cit.,  p.  92. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS  265 

But  that  the  unities  should  be  arbitrarily  imposed  upon  every 
drama  without  exception  is  absurd,  since  the  theatrical  conditions 
that  called  them  forth  are  no  longer  the  same.  That  Aeschylus 
and  Sophocles,  if  present  with  us  in  the  flesh,  would  avail 
themselves  of  the  greater  flexibility  and  adaptabihty  of  the 
modern  theater  I  cannot  doubt.  At  any  rate  that  restless  spirit, 
Euripides,  would  certainly  have  gloried  in  its  freedom. 

As  a  cumulative  result  of  the  conditions  already  described 
the  action  of  a  Greek  drama  was  restricted  to  the  culmination 
alone,  corresponding  to  the  fifth  act  of  most  modern  plays. 
Though  we  have  seen  that  the  Greek  poets  arbitrarily  juxtaposed, 
as  if  within  the  confines  of  a  sun's  circuit,  events  which  were 
actually  separated  by  considerable  intervals,  yet  even  the 
widest  license  would  hardly  permit  a  whole  series  of  transactions, 
of  sufficient  dignity  and  importance  to  be  chosen  for  tragic 
representation,  to  be  compressed  within  a  single  day  and  Hmited 
to  a  single  spot.  As  Dryden^  expressed  it,  the  ancient  play- 
wrights "set  the  audience,  as  it  were,  at  the  post  where  the  race 
is  to  be  concluded;  and,  saving  them  the  tedious  expectation  of 
seeing  the  poet  set  out  and  ride  the  beginning  of  the  course,  they 
suffer  you  not  to  behold  him,  till  he  is  in  sight  of  the  goal,  and 
just  upon  you."  Thus  in  Aeschylus'  Suppliants  we  see  nothing 
of  the  unwelcome  suit  of  Aegyptus'  sons  and  of  the  events  which 
led  the  daughters  of  Danaus  to  take  refuge  in  flight.  All  this 
lies  in  the  past  and  is  brought  before  us  indirectly.  The  action 
begins  when  the  Danaids  have  reached  another  land  and  are  on 
the  point  of  being  overtaken  by  their  cousins.  Similarly,  in 
Euripides'  Alcestis  we  learn  by  hearsay  the  long  story  of  Apollo's 
servitude  at  the  court  of  Admetus,  of  his  providing  a  way  of 
escape  from  death  for  the  king,  and  of  the  latter's  disheartening 
search  for  a  substitute.  Only  the  final  stage  in  the  action,  the 
day  of  the  queen's  self-immolation  and  rescue,  is  chosen  for 
actual  representation.  The  same  situation  recurs  in  almost 
every  piece.  Of  course  in  trilogies  it  was  possible  to  select 
three  different  time-spheres  and  three  different  localities  for  the 

'  Cf.  Dramatic  Essays  (Everyman's  Library  edition),  pp.  12  f. 


266  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

dramatic  action.  But  here  again  only  the  crests  of  three  crises  in 
the  story  were  put  before  the  spectators'  eyes;  all  the  rest  was 
narrated.  So  invariable  a  method  of  attack  would  seem  monoto- 
nous to  us  today,  but  its  successful  employment  by  Ibsen  and 
many  another  in  modern  times  proves  that  there  is  nothing 
blameworthy  in  the  practice  per  se. 

Finally,  since  the  dramatic  action  was  confined  to  a  single 
day  (however  elastic)  at  the  culmination  of  the  story,  it  was  rarely 
possible  for  the  dramatis  personae  to  experience  any  particular 
change  or  development  of  character  during  the  course  of  the 
play.  This  fixity  of  type  was  not  only  a  natural  result  of  theat- 
rical conditions  in  ancient  times  and  of  the  use  of  masks  but  was 
also  in  thorough  accord  with  Homeric  conventions  (see  pp.  254f ., 
above).  Moreover,  it  harmonized  completely  with  the  Greek 
fondness  for  schematization.  Horace's  words  in  his  Ars  Poetica 
are  entirely  Hellenic  in  spirit:  *' Either  follow  tradition,  or 
invent  that  which  shall  be  self-consistent.  In  the  former  case, 
let  Achilles  be  impatient,  irascible,  ruthless,  keen  .  .  .  .  ;  let 
Medea  be  untamed  and  unconquerable,  Ino  tearful,  Ixion  treach- 
erous, lo  ever  roving,  and  Orestes  in  sorry  plight.  In  the  latter 
case,  keep  the  character  to  the  end  of  the  play  as  it  was  at  the 
beginning  and  let  it  be  consistent"  (vss.  iipff.)-  All  this  imphes 
more  than  we  would  think  desirable  today.  Not  only  was  a 
positive  development  into  a  character  seemingly  inharmonious 
with  that  seen  at  first  rarely  possible,  but  the  singleness  of  pur- 
pose in  ancient  plays,  which  has  been  called  the  unity  of  mood 
(see  p.  20 1,  above),  crowded  out  incidents  which  might  have 
revealed  other  phases,  no  matter  how  consistent,  of  a  dramatic 
personage's  character.  The  taste  of  some  critics  objected  to  even 
the  slight  modifications  in  role  which  ancient  conditions  did 
permit.  For  example,  to  modern  readers  the  manner  in  which 
Medea,  in  Euripides'  tragedy  of  that  name,  wavers  between  love 
for  her  children  and  the  desire  to  punish  her  recreant  husband  by 
murdering  them  is  esteemed  one  of  the  finest  touches  in  ancient 
drama.  But  the  Greek  argument  which  is  prefixed  to  this  play 
reports  that  "they  blame  Euripides  because  he  did  not  maintain 


-I 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  PHYSICAL  CONDITIONS  267 

Medea's  role  but  allowed  her  to  burst  into  tears  as  she  plotted 
against  Jason  and  his  second  wife."  Again,  so  excellent  a  critic 
as  Aristotle  cites  the  title  role  in  Euripides'  Iphigenia  at  Aulis  as 
an  example  of  inconsistency/  inasmuch  as  the  Iphigenia  who 
pleads  for  her  life  at  vss.  1 2 1 1  ff .  in  no  wise  resembles  her  later  self, 
who  willingly  approaches  the  altar.  To  modern  feehng,  since  the 
change  is  psychologically  possible  and  is  plausibly  motived  by 
the  sudden  realization  that  her  death  can  serve  her  country,  it 
seems  entirely  unobjectionable.  But  these  two  passages  and  the 
usual  practice  of  the  Greek  stage  reveal  a  discrepancy  between 
the  ancient  and  the  modern  points  of  view.  The  simplicity  of 
character-drawing  which  resulted  from  Greek  methods  is 
strikingly  described,  in  a  different  connection,  by  Mr.  Cornford : 

Agamemnon,  for  instance,  is  simply  Hybris  typified  in  a  legendary 
person.  He  is  a  hero  flown  with  "insolence"  (the  pride  and  elation  of 
victory),  and  that  is  all  that  can  be  said  of  him.  He  is  not,  like  a  charac- 
ter in  Ibsen,  a  complete  human  being  with  a  complex  personality,  a  center 
from  which  relations  radiate  to  innumerable  points  of  contact  in  a  universe 
of  indifferent  fact.  He  has  not  a  continuous  history:  nothing  has  ever 
happened  to  him  except  the  conquest  of  Troy  and  the  sacrifice  of  Iphigenia ; 
nothing  ever  could  happen  to  him  except  Pride's  fall  and  the  stroke  of  the 
axe.  As  we  see  him  he  is  not  a  man,  but  a  single  state  of  mind,  which  has 
never  been  preceded  by  other  states  of  mind  (except  one,  at  the  sacrifice  in 
AuUs),  but  is  isolated,  without  context,  margin,  or  atmosphere.  Every 
word  he  says,  in  so  far  as  he  speaks  for  himself  and  not  for  the  poet,  comes 
straight  out  of  that  state  of  mind  and  expresses  some  phase  of  it.  He  has  a 
definite  relation  to  Cassandra,  a  definite  relation  to  Clytemnestra;  but  no 
relation  to  anything  else.  If  he  can  be  said  to  have  a  character  at  all  it  con- 
sists solely  of  certain  defects  which  make  him  liable  to  Insolence;  if  he  has 
any  circumstances,  they  are  only  those  which  prompt  him  to  his  besetting 
passion.* 

'  Cf.  Poetics  i454a3i  ff. 

'  Cf.  Thucydides  Mythistoricus  (1907),  p.  146. 


There  seems  no  human  thought  so 
primitive  as  to  have  lost  its  bearing  on 
our  own  thought,  nor  so  ancient  as  to 
have  broken  its  connection  with  our  own 
life.— E.  B.  Tylor. 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE  INFLUENCE  OF  NATIONAL  CUSTOMS  AND  IDEAS' 

It  is  unnecessary  to  state  that  the  differences  between  ancient 
life  in  Greece  and  modern  hfe  in  America  and  Western  Europe 
are  endless.  To  attempt  to  enumerate  them  all  would  require 
a  separate  volume.  In  the  present  chapter  I  shall  undertake 
to  touch  upon  some  of  the  features  which  more  intimately 
affected  Greek  drama. 

First  of  all  a  modern  can  scarcely  avoid  a  feeling  of  surprise 
that  plays  were  almost  always  brought  out  in  competition;  but 
no  instinct  was  more  thoroughly  imbedded  in  the  Greek  con- 
sciousness than  this.  From  the  time  of  the  first  celebration  of 
the  Olympian  games  in  776  B.C.  or  before,  a  contest  of  some  kind 
formed,  to  their  minds,  the  most  natural  setting  for  the  display 
of  athletic,  musical,  and  literary  skill.  Associated  with  this 
fact  was  another,  viz.,  that  the  prizes  awarded  upon  these 
occasions  were  usually  more  honorific  than  intrinsically  valuable. 
The  victors  in  the  Olympian  games  received  a  garland  of  wild 
olive  and  a  palm  branch.  It  is  true  that  the  delighted  fellow- 
citizens  of  the  victors  usually  supplemented  the  award  by  some- 
thing more  substantial,  but  the  fact  remains  that  these  trivial 
objects  were  the  sole  official  reward  for  many  arduous  months  of 
preparation  and  training.  In  Hke  manner  we  are  informed  by 
the  most  ancient  tradition  that  the  original  prize  in  tragic 

'  In  addition  to  the  works  mentioned  on  pp.  xvii  and  xx  f .,  above,  cf.  Petersen 
Preisrictiter  der  grossen  Dionysien  (1878);  Hayley,  "Social  and  Domestic  Position 
of  Women  in  Aristophanes,"  Harvard  Studies,  I  (1890),  159  ff.;  Lounsbury, 
Shakespeare  as  a  Dramatic  Artist  (1902);  Goodwin's  edition  of  Demosthenes' 
Against  Midias,  Appendix  IV  (1906);  Capps,  "Epigraphical  Problems  in  the 
History  of  Attic  Comedy,"  American  Journal  of  Philology,  XXVIII  (1907),  179  ff.; 
Legrand,  Daos;  Tableau  de  la  comedie  grecque  pendant  la  periode  dite  nouvelle 
(1910),  translated  by  Loeb  in  1917  under  the  title  The  New  Greek  Comedy;  Shep- 
pard,  Greek  Tragedy  (191 1);  and  Ruppel,  Konzeption  und  Ausarheitung  der  aris- 
tophanischen  Komodien  (1913). 

268 


INFLUENCE  OF  NATIONAL  CUSTOMS  AND  IDEAS  269 

contests  was  a  goat  (see  p.  13  f.  above) ;  and  what  is  more,  it  is 
said  to  have  been  customary  for  the  victorious  poet  to  offer  up 
his  prize  in  immediate  sacrifice  to  the  god  of  the  festival.  After 
the  reorganization  of  the  City  Dionysia  about  501  B.C.,  however, 
it  seems  Hkely  that  pecuniary  awards  were  estabhshed  for  the 
tragic  victors.  Though  we  are  in  ignorance  as  to  their  amount, 
some  notion  can  be  formed  from  the  fact  that  prizes  of  ten,  eight, 
and  six  minae,'  respectively,  were  granted  dithj^rambic  victors 
at  the  Piraeus  festival  toward  the  close  of  the  fourth  century  B.C. 
Three  prizes  seem  to  have  been  available  in  tragedy  at  the  City 
Dionysia  also,  so  that  every  contestant  was  sure  of  some 
compensation.  In  other  words,  to  be  chosen  to  compete  at  all 
was  sufficient  honor  to  entitle  even  the  poorest  of  the  three  to  a 
suitable  reward.  Only  the  winner  of  the  first  prize,  however, 
was  technically  regarded  as  ''victor."  In  comedy,  according  to 
tradition,  the  original  prize  was  a  jar  of  wine,  which  likewise 
gave  place  to  financial  awards  after  comedy  came  under  state 
control  at  the  City  Dionysia  of  486  B.C.  These  arrangements 
were  extended  to  the  Lenaea,  when  first  comedy  and  then 
tragedy  were  introduced  there  (see  p.  1 19,  above),  and  to  contests 
between  actors,  as  these  were  established  at  the  two  festivals 
(see  p.  202,  above).  The  successful  playwrights,  actors,  and 
''choregi"  (see  below)  seem  to  have  been  crowned  with  garlands 
of  ivy  by  the  presiding  archon — the  archon  eponymus  at  the 
City  Dionysia  and  the  king  archon  at  the  Lenaea. 

In  several  particulars  the  government  under  which  the 
Athenians  lived  was  indirect  in  its  provisions.  For  example, 
though  valuable  mines  belonged  to  the  state,  they  were  not 
worked  by  government  officials  but  were  leased  to  private 
parties.  Accordingly,  although  the  dramatic  festivals  were 
under  the  direct  control  of  the  state,  the  financial  management 
was  relegated  to  lessees,  who  agreed  to  keep  the  theater  in  repair 
and  to  pay  a  stipulated  sum  into  the  pubhc  treasury  in  return  for 

'  A  mina  was  equivalent  to  one  hundred  drachmae  and  was  worth  about  $18, 
though  allowance  must  be  made  for  the  greater  purchase  value  of  money  in  those 
days. 


270 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


the  privilege  of  collecting  an  admission  fee.  During  the  fourth 
century  B.C.  the  lessees  of  the  Piraeus  theater  paid  thirty-three 
minae  annually.  This  system  explains  why  the  authorities, 
when  they  wished  to  enable  even  the  poorest  citizens  to  attend 
the  dramatic  exhibitions,  did  not  simply  throw  open  the  doors  to 
all  or  issue  passes.  Instead,  toward  the  end  of  the  fifth  century 
it  was  provided  that  any  citizen  might  receive  two  obols  from 
the  "theoric"  fund  in  order  to  pay  his  own  way  into  the  day's 
performances  (see  p.  120,  above). 

Another  instance  of  the  indirect  exercise  of  governmental 
functions  is  seen  in  the  practice  of  various  kinds  of  "pubHc 
service"  (XeLTovpyla).     Thus  when  the  Board  of  Generals  had 
provided  the  hull  of  a  warship  ("trireme")  they  did  not  proceed 
also  to  rig  it  and  to  hire  a  commander.    Instead  some  rich 
citizen  was  required  to  contribute  toward  its  rigging  and  upkeep 
and  to  command  it  for  one  year.    This  obhgation  was  laid  upon 
the  wealthier  citizens  in  rotation;  and  if  anyone  considered  that 
he  was  being  called  upon  too  frequently  or  that  someone  of 
greater  substance  was  escaping  his  just  responsibihties,  he  could 
challenge  him  to  an  exchange  of  property  {dvTidocns).    Accord- 
ing to  law  the  man  so  challenged  was  restricted  to  the  two  options 
of  either  assuming  the  burden  or  trading  estates.     This  system 
of  liturgies  appUed  to  the  maintenance  not  only  of  the  naval 
service  but  also  of  dramatic  and  dithyrambic  contests,  the  torch 
race,  etc.     It  was  provided  that  no  one  need  act  as  trierarch 
more  frequently  than  once  in  three  years,  bear  any  liturgy  two 
successive  years,  or  two  liturgies  in  the  same  year.     But  it  was 
the  glory  of  Athenian  citizenship  that  they  served  oftener  and 
spent  their  means  more  generously  than  the  law  demanded. 
The  bearers   of   the   theatrical   liturgies   were   called   chorcgi 
(xopvyol),  and  there  was  no  surer  method  of  displaying  one's 
wealth  and  of  currying  favor  with  the  populace  than  by  voluntary 
and  lavish  assumption  of  the  choregia.    The  evidence  is  not 
sufficient  to  establish  just  how  the  charges  were  distributed. 
The  state  seems  to  have  paid  the  actors,  and  the  choregus  to 
have  been  responsible  for  assembling  and  hiring  a  body  of 


INFLUENCE  OF  NATIONAL  CUSTOMS  AND  IDEAS  271 

choreutae,  engaging  a  trainer  to  drill  them,  purchasing  or  renting 
costumes  for  the  chorus,  employing  mute  characters,  providing 
showy  extras  of  various  kinds,  etc.  As  regards  the  flute-player 
a  distinction  was  perhaps  drawn  between  the  dithyrambic  and 
dramatic  contests,  the  state  employing  him  in  the  former  and  the 
choregus  in  the  latter.  The  question  of  an  additional  actor  has 
already  been  discussed  (see  pp.  172-82,  above).  A  speaker  in 
one  of  Lysias'  orations^  claims  to  have  spent,  within  a  period  of 
seven  years,  thirty  minae  for  a  tragic  choregia,  sixteen  minae  for 
one  in  comedy,  fifty  minae  for  a  dithyrambic  chorus  of  men,  fif- 
teen minae  for  a  chorus  of  boys,  three  hundred  and  sixty  minae 
for  six  trierarchies,  twelve  minae  as  gymnasiarch,  etc.  Since  this 
man's  ambition  led  him  to  do  more  than  his  share,  these  outlays 
are  probably  somewhat  larger  than  they  need  to  have  been; 
in  fact,  he  declares  that  the  law  would  not  have  required  of  him 
one-fourth  as  much.  But  in  addition  to  indicating  how  much 
some  were  willing  to  spend,  the  figures  are  valuable  also  as 
showing  the  comparative  expense  of  the  different  events.  Need- 
less to  state,  a  poet's  chance  of  victory  was  considerably  affected 
by  the  wealth  and  disposition  of  his  choregus.  An  ambitious 
and  lavish  man  like  Nicias,  who  is  declared  by  Plutarch^  never 
to  have  been  worsted  in  any  of  his  numerous  choregias,  could 
manifestly  do  much  to  retrieve  a  poor  play.  But  woe  betide  the 
plajrwright  whose  success  was  largely  in  the  keeping  of  a  sponsor 
who  would  spend  no  more  than  law  and  public  opinion  could 
wring  from  him.  In  405  and  404  B.C.,  while  Athens  was  experi- 
encing a  financial  stringency  just  before  the  close  of  the  Pelopon- 
nesian  War,  the  number  of  choregi  at  the  City  Dionysia  was 
temporarily  doubled,  so  that  two  synchoregi  might  divide  be- 
tween them  the  burden  which  normally  fell  to  one  man.  Finally 
about  308  B.C.  the  dearth  of  rich  men  caused  the  abandonment 
of  the  choregic  system  and  the  annual  appointment  of  an 
agonothete  (ayoivodeTrjs)  or  ''master  of  contests,"  whose  own  re- 
sources were  supplemented  by  a  state  subsidy  and  who  assumed 

'  Cf.  Lysias  xxi,  §§  1-5. 
'  Cf .  his  Life  of  Nicias,  III. 


2  72  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

entire  control  and  financial  responsibility  for  all  the  dithyram- 
bic  and  dramatic  contests  at  the  festival. 

One  of  the  most  characteristic  features  of  the  Athenian 
democracy  was  the"  large  role  assigned  to  the  lot  in  the  selection 
of  officials.  For  example,  in  Aristotle's  day  the  nine  archons 
were  chosen  by  lot  from  five  hundred  men,  who  had  themselves 
been  previously  chosen  by  lot,  fifty  from  each  of  the  ten  tribes. 
Whatever  may  have  been  the  other  objects  of  this  system,  at 
least  one  was  the  prevention  of  bribery  and  manipulation;  and 
without  a  doubt  this  was  the  motive  which  led  to  the  use  of  the 
lot  in  theatrical  matters.  Thus  the  judges  in  the  contests  seem, 
though  the  scheme  is  largely  conjectural  and  depends  upon 
insufficient  notices,  to  have  been  selected  and  to  have  rendered 
decisions  somewhat  as  follows :  Some  days  before  the  festival  a 
certain  number  of  names  was  taken  from  each  tribe  and  deposited 
in  ten  sealed  urns  on  the  Acropolis.  Just  before  the  contest 
began,  these  vessels  were  brought  into  the  theater  and  the  pre- 
siding archon  drew  one  name  from  each  tribal  urn.  The  men  so 
chosen  came  forward  and  swore  to  judge  truly.  When  the 
performances  were  over,  each  judge  wrote  down  his  verdict  and 
the  ten  ballots  were  placed  in  a  single  urn.  The  archon  now 
drew  out  half  of  these,  which  were  alone  used  in  arriving  at  the 
ultimate  decision!  So  cumbersome  a  system  can  be  justified 
only  by  its  results;  and  it  must  be  allowed  that,  so  far  as  we  can 
now  determine,  no  poet  suffered  any  great  injustice  from  its 
operation.  The  playwrights  usually  won  whom  later  critics 
were  unanimous  in  considering  the  greatest.  Each  of  the  tragic 
triad  wrote  about  one  hundred  plays:  Aeschylus,  whose  career 
fell  before  the  admission  of  tragedy  to  the  Lenaea,  gained 
thirteen  victories  at  the  City  Dionysia;  Sophocles,  eighteen  City 
and  at  least  two  Lenaean  victories;  and  Euripides,  fifteen  (or 
possibly  only  five)  victories  at  both  festivals  (see  p.  325,  below). 
It  must  be  remembered  that  several  plays  would  be  simultane- 
ously crowned  at  each  victory  in  tragedy  (see  p.  198,  above) .  The 
most  astounding  reversal  occurred  when  Philocles,  Aeschylus' 
mediocre  nephew,  defeated  Sophocles'  didascalic  group  in  which 


INFLUENCE  OF  NATIONAL  CUSTOMS  AND  IDEAS  273 

was  included  his  Oedipus  the  King,  perhaps  the  greatest  tragedy 
of  ancient  times!  However,  this  apparent  lapse  of  judgment  is 
p6ssibly  to  be  explained  by  the  factor  mentioned  in  the  last 
paragraph,  a  parsimonious  choregus. 

The  lot  was  employed  also  in  another  connection.  Imme- 
diately after  the  beginning  of  each  civil  year  in  Hecatombaeon 
(July),  the  archon  eponymus  and  the  king  archon  attended  to  the 
appointment  of  tragic  choregi  for  the  City  Dionysia  and  the 
Lenaean  festival,  respectively.  During  the  fifth  century  they 
chose  the  comic  choregi  as  well,  but  Aristotle  informs  us  that  in 
his  day  their  selection  was  managed  by  the  tribes.^  After  this 
detail  had  been  arranged  the  archons  proceeded  to  "grant  a 
chorus"  to  a  suitable  number  of  playwrights.  For  this  purpose 
doubtless  an  untried  poet  was  required  to  submit  a  more  or  less 
finished  copy  of  what  he  wished  to  produce;  from  seasoned 
writers  probably  the  presentation  of  a  scenario  or  even  less  was 
deemed  sufi&cient.  At  any  rate  Dr.  Ruppel  has  shown  that  in 
Aristophanes'  comedies  the  plot  was  sometimes  essentially 
modified  by  or  even  integrally  depended  upon  events  which  took 
place  but  a  few  weeks  before  the  festival.  It  is  evident  that  the 
archons  exercised  considerable  discretion  in  selecting  the  play- 
wrights; at  least  we  are  told  that  no  less  a  personage  than 
Sophocles  was  once  refused  a  chorus  when  one  was  granted  to 
an  obscure  Gnesippus.^  When  poets  and  choregi  had  finally 
been  chosen,  the  troublesome  task  of  matching  them  still  con- 
fronted the  oflScials.  Naturally  the  important  consequences 
which  we  have  seen  to  grow  out  of  the  assignment  of  a  generous 
or  niggardly  choregus  to  a  poet  served  only  to  enhance  the 
difficulty  of  the  situation.  And  in  the  Hght  of  what  has  just 
been  said  concerning  the  Athenian  fondness  for  the  lot,  it  is  not 
surprising  that  the  problem  was  met  by  its  use.  After  the  actors 
passed  from  private  to  public  management,  about  449  B.C. 
(see  p.  183,  above),  the  lot  was  employed  also  to  distribute  the 
protagonists  among  the  dramatists.     In  the  fourth  century  the 

*  Cf.  Aristotle,  Constitution  of  A  thens,  c.  56. 

'  Cf.  Kock,  Coniicorum  Atticorum  Fragmenta,  I,  16,  fr.  15  (Cratinus). 


274  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

more  equitable  system  became  possible  of  permitting  each 
protagonist  to  appear  in  a  single  one  of  each  tragedian's  three 
.plays  (see  p.  185,  above). 

One  of  the  most  prominent  traits  of  the  Greek,  and  especially 
of  the  Athenian,  character  was  litigiousness.     Inasmuch  as  from 
the  time  of  Pericles  citizens  of  Attica  received  a  slight  stipend 
for  serving  upon  juries,  which  ranged  from  201   to  2,500  in 
membership   and   sometimes   reached   an   aggregate  of  6,000, 
there  was  scarcely  an  Athenian  but  was  personally  acquainted 
with  courtroom  procedure  and  not  a  few  practically  supported 
themselves  in  this  way.     Moreover,  this  situation  was  intensified 
by  the  fact  that  the  fifth  century  witnessed  the  rise  of  formal 
oratory  at  Athens  and  its  exploitation  by  numerous  rhetorical 
and  sophistic  teachers.     It  is  hardly  possible  that  all  these 
influences  should  have  allowed  contemporaneous  drama  to  escape 
unscathed.     Their  first  effect  is  seen  in  the  actual  introduction 
of  a  courtroom  scene,  as  in  Aeschylus'  Eumenides,  in  which 
Orestes  is  put  on  trial  before  the  Council  of  the  Areopagus  for 
having  murdered  his  mother.     Athena  is  the  presiding  judge, 
Apollo  the  attorney  for  the  defense,  and  the  chorus  of  Furies 
conducts  the  prosecution.     Aristophanes  satirized  the  Athenian 
weakness  in  his  Wasps,  the  chorus  of  which  appeared  in  the  guise 
of  those  quarrelsome  insects;    and  that  inveterate  juryman, 
Philocleon,  was  provided  with  a  domestic  court  wherein  one  dog 
was  duly  arraigned  by  another  for  having  pilfered  a  round  of 
Sicilian  cheese!    Again,  certain  scenes  in  other  plays,  though 
not  ostensibly  placed  in  the  courtroom,  are  practically  treated 
as  if  they  were.     For  example,  in  Euripides'  Trojan  Women, 
Menelaus  meets  his  truant  wife  for  the  first  time  since  her  elope- 
ment.    Will  he  pardon  or  slay  her?     Helen  herself  naturally 
hopes  to  be  forgiven  and  restored  to  her  husband's  favor;   but 
the  Trojan  women,  who  hold  her  responsible  for  their  country's 
downfall,  wish  condign  punishment  to  be  meted  out  to  her. 
Consequently  the  play  degenerates  into  a  quasi-trial  in  which 
Menelaus  presides  as  judge,  Hecabe,  ex-queen  of  Troy,  represents 
the  prosecution,  and  Helen  pleads  her  own  cause.     In  the  third 


INFLUENCE  OF  NATIONAL  CUSTOMS  AND  IDEAS  275 

place,  when  a  court  scene  was  out  of  the  question  a  debate  of 
some  kind  was  often  dragged  in.  Of  course  "struggle "  is  of  the 
essence  of  drama  and  a  formal  "agon"  was  by  derivation  almost 
indispensable  in  Old  Comedy  (see  pp.  42-44),  but  I  am  now  refer- 
ring to  something  different.  Perhaps  the  most  glaring  instance 
is  found  in  Euripides'  Madness  of  Heracles  (vss.  158  If.).  Lycus 
has  resolved  upon  Amphitryon's  speedy  death,  yet  they  both 
stop  to  argue  whether  it  be  better  to  fight  with  the  spear  or  the 
bow!  Finally,  since  in  the  law  courts  the  addresses  of  the 
contending  parties  were  equaUzed  by  means  of  the  "water- 
clock"  (the  clepsydra),  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  speeches  of 
sharply  contrasted  characters  in  tragedy  are  occasionally  made 
of  exactly  the  same  length.  The  best  example  occurs  in  Eu- 
ripides' Hecahe,  where  Polymestor's  speech  of  fifty-one  lines  is 
exactly  balanced  by  that  of  the  Trojan  queen  (cf.  vss.  1132-82 
and  1 187-1237).  In  Aeschylus'  Seven  against  Thebes  there  are 
seven  pairs  of  contrasted  speeches,  two  of  which  are  exactly  equal 
(cf.  vss.  422-36  =  437-51,  and  568-96  =  597-625,  and  two  others 
are  nearly  so;  cf.  vss.  375-965^397-416  and  631-52^^653-76). 
If  we  had  before  us  the  ipsissima  verba  of  the  tragic  writers  it  is 
Hkely  that  these  and  some  other  minor  inequalities  would  be 
resolved.  Thus  in  Euripides'  Medea,  Jason  speaks  fifty-four 
lines  in  reply  to  the  heroine's  fifty-five  (cf.  vss.  465-519^^522-75); 
but  there  is  some  reason  for  believing  that  vs.  468  is  interpolated. 
Again,  in  Sophocles'  Antigone  the  speeches  of  Creon  and  Hacmon 
would  precisely  correspond  (cf.  vss.  639-80  and  683-723),  if  we 
suppose  a  verse  to  have  dropped  out  after  vs.  690.  In  conclusion 
it  ought  to  be  stated  that  such  balancing  was  quite  congenial  to 
the  fondness  for  symmetry  which  characterized  the  Greek  genius 
in  every  field  of  endeavor. 

Perhaps  the  one  idea  which  was  most  fixed  in  the  popular 
consciousness  of  ancient  Greece  was  that  of  Nemesis,  the  goddess 
who  punished  the  overweening  presumption  arising  from  long- 
continued  prosperity  and  success.  Herodotus'  history  excm- 
phfies  the  notion  both  in  its  main  theme,  the  crushing  defeat 
which  brought  Persia's  long  series  of  victories  to  a  close,  and  in 


276  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

numerous  digressions,  such  as  the  story  of  Polycrates  and  his 
ring.  Accordingly,  when  Phrynichus  in  his  Phoeniciun  Women 
and  afterward  Aeschylus  in  his  Persians  undertook  to  celebrate 
the  Persian  rout  they  were  careful  to  avoid  a  display  of  the  pride 
which  had  ruined  the  invading  host,  by  laying  the  scene  in  the 
Orient  and  exhibiting  the  mourning  of  Persia,  not  the  triumph  of 
Greece  (see  p.  1 24,  above) .  Again,  in  the  seven  pairs  of  contrasted 
speeches  just  mentioned  as  occurring  in  Aeschylus'  Seven  against 
Thebes,  a  messenger  states  in  turn  the  name  of  the  Argive  cham- 
pion who  is  to  assail  each  of  the  seven  gates  of  Thebes,  describing 
his  actions,  words,  the  device  upon  his  shield,  etc.,  and  the  king 
in  a  similar  manner  matches  each  enemy  with  a  warrior  of  his 
own.  It  is  not  without  significance  that  to  a  Greek  mind  "the 
boasts  and  blazons  of  the  champions  convict  them  of  presump- 
tion, and  doom  them  beforehand  to  failure.  The  answers  of 
Eteocles  are  always  right,  take  advantage  of  the  enemy's 
insolence,  and  secure  divine  favour  by  studied  moderation."^ 
Still  again,  in  the  same  playwright's  Agamemnon  appears  an 
incident  which  to  the  uninitiated  modern  reader  seems  forced 
and  unworthy  of  the  prominence  and  space  assigned  to  it. 
Clytemnestra  has  been  untrue  to  her  lord  during  his  long  absence 
at  Troy  and  is  now  prepared  by  her  paramour's  help  to  murder 
him.  Agamemnon  himself,  thanks  to  the  recent  smiles  of 
fortune,  is  in  the  sort  of  position  which  would  easily  expose  him 
to  the  vengeance  of  Nemesis.  In  the  play  (vss.  905-57)  Clytem- 
nestra skilfully  takes  advantage  of  this  situation  in  order  to 
array  the  powerful  goddess  upon  her  side.  She  urges  Agamemnon 
not  to  set  his  conquering  foot  upon  the  common  earth  but  to 
pass  from  his  chariot  into  the  palace  over  a  purple  tapestry.  The 
king  shrinks  from  an  act  which  would  be  more  becoming  to  a  god 
than  a  mortal,  but  finally  yields  to  his  wife's  insistence.  The 
result  is  that  to  a  Greek  audience  he  would  seem  to  invite  and 
almost  to  deserve  the  doom  which  his  unfaithful  spouse  quickly 
bi'ings  upon  him.  These  instances  from  the  many  available 
suffice  to  indicate  Greek  feeling  on  the  subject. 

'  Cf.  Sheppard,  op.  cil.,  p.  58. 


INFLUENCE  OF  NATIONAL  CUSTOMS  AND  IDEAS  277 

The  poets  of  New  Comedy  leaned  heavily  upon  the  "long 
arm  of  coincidence."  The  young  women  who  are  the  recipients 
of  the  gilded  youths'  favors  are  frequently  found  in  the  outcome 
to  be  free-born,  the  children  of  respectable  parents,  and  accept- 
able wives.  In  several  instances  the  victim  of  violence  at  some 
nocturnal  festival  has  unwittingly  become  the  spouse  of  her 
ravisher.  The  situation  is  aggravated  by  the  unity  of  time. 
Men  who  have  been  absent  from  their  homes  for  months  or  years 
must  some  day  return  to  their  households,  pregnant  women  must 
at  last  be  deHvered  of  their  offspring,  long-standing  debts  must 
finally  fall  due,  and  the  escapades  of  spoiled  sons  must  at  some 
time  be  brought  to  light  and  receive  the  attention  of  "hard- 
hearted" parents.  Coming  singly,  such  occurrences  occasion 
no  surprise.  But  when  several  of  that  sort  are  crowded  into  a 
period  of  twenty-four  hours  or  less  in  play  after  play,  to  our 
minds  the  coincidence  becomes  well-nigh  intolerable.  It  seems 
likely,  however,  that  the  ancients  regarded  such  concatenations 
of  events  with  more  kindly  eyes,  for  the  reason  that  Chance  or 
Fortune  (Tvxv)  was  commonly  accepted  as  exercising  supreme 
authority  over  the  lives  and  fortunes  of  men.  This  conception 
also  helps  to  explain  the  curious  immunity  from  punishment 
which  was  usually  enjoyed  by  the  scheming  slaves  in  comedy. 
Of  course  to  a  race  whose  national  characteristics  were  embodied 
in  the  wily  Odysseus,  cleverness,  however  unscrupulous,  always 
seemed  to  elevate  its  practitioners  above  the  rules  of  ordinary 
morahty.  But  more.  Just  as  "  in  the  days  of  the  Odyssey  a  man 
merely  required  to  be  skilful  at  deceiving  his  fellows  to  become 
a  favorite  of  Athena's,  so  in  the  days  of  New  Comedy  this 
quality  gave  him  a  claim  to  the  favor  of  the  queen  of  the  world 
— omnipotent  Tyche."^ 

It  is  not  always  realized  how  almost  oriental  was  the  seclusion 
in  which  respectable  women  were  kept  at  Athens  during  the 
period  of  its  greatness  in  drama.  Respectable  women  of  good 
family  were  not  permitted  to  leave  their  homes  except  for  special 
reasons,  nor  to  converse  with  men  other  than  near  relatives  or 

'  Cf.  Legrand,  op.  cit.,  pp.  312-15  and  455  f. 


278  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

slaves.  When  it  is  remembered  that  the  physical  arrangements 
of  the  Greek  theaters  did  not  readily  admit  of  interior  scenes 
(see  pp.  237  £f.,  above)  it  will  be  understood  how  difficult  it  was 
for  an  ancient  playwright  to  bring  women  of  the  better  class 
upon  his  stage.  This  appHes  particularly  to  comedy  as  being  a 
more  accurate  mirror  of  contemporaneous  manners;  in  tragedy, 
as  will  presently  appear,  it  was  counteracted  by  another  factor. 
At  weddings,  funerals,  and  religious  festivals  women,  especially 
married  women,  were  allowed  greater  Hberty  than  at  other  times. 
Thus,  in  Aristophanes'  Women  at  the  Thesmophoria  the  coming 
of  ihQfesta  affords  them  an  opportunity  of  carrying  on  the  busi- 
ness of  the  play.  In  the  same  writer's  Women  in  Council  they 
act  in  secret  and  disguised  as  men  until  their  coup  d'etat  has 
succeeded  and  the  government  has  been  voted  into  their  hands. 
The  situation  in  Aristophanes'  Lysistrata  is  quite  as  abnormal, 
being  nothing  more  or  less  than  a  ''sex  strike!"  In  more  con- 
ventional plays  the  speaking  characters,  apart  from  divinities, 
are  practically  restricted  to  women  of  the  demimonde,  foreign 
residents  (metics),  female  slaves,  those  other  virtuous  but  vulgar 
creatures  whom  poverty  has  compelled  to  seek  a  Hvelihood  in 
various  business  pursuits  of  the  humbler  sort,  and  finally  women 
advanced  in  years,  shrewish  in  disposition,  and  unattractive  in 
person.  The  first  and  last  types  are  especially  common  in  New 
Comedy,  while  Plautus'  Persian  is  said  to  be  unique  in  its 
presentation  of  a  chaste  and  free-born  maiden  in  an  active  role.'' 
Even  the  girl  who  has  excited  the  young  man's  affections  and 
whose  counterpart  in  modern  drama  would  be  a  conspicuous 
figure  is  seldom  seen  and  is  not  always  heard.  The  most  that 
she  seems  normally  capable  of  doing  is  to  ejaculate  a  cry  of  agony 
from  behind  the  scenes  at  the  moment  of  childbirth.  This  is 
the  more  surprising  since  the  fact  of  her  Attic  citizenship  is 
rarely  established  and  sometimes  is  not  even  suspected  until  the 
very  close  of  the  play.  The  poet's  consciousness  of  what  he 
intends  to  make  of  her — a  free-born  citizen  and  a  legal  wife — 
apparently  constrains  him  to  protect  her  from  an  unconvention- 

'  Cf.  Prescott  in  Classical  Philology,  XI  (1916),  132. 


INFLUENCE  OF  NATIONAL  CUSTOMS  AND  IDEAS  279 

ality  of  conduct  which,  though  suitable  to  her  present  condition, 
would  afterward  be  looked  back  upon  with  regret  by  herself, 
her  husband  and  newly  recovered  relatives,  and  even  by  the 
spectators  themselves.  Truth  to  tell,  the  girls  from  whom  an 
Athenian  was  required  to  take  his  bride  were  scarcely  fitted  to 
be  his  intellectual  companions  or  to  grace  a  dialogue  in  drama, 
while  the  best  of  the  courtesans  could  quahfy  in  either  capacity. 
According  to  American  notions  the  marriage  of  convenience 
arranged  by  the  parents  is  hardly  warranted  to  produce  domestic 
felicity.  But  the  hero  of  Greek  comedy  often  selected  a  mistress 
for  graces  of  mind  and  person  and  afterward,  when  her  legitimate 
birth  was  discovered,  gladly  made  her  his  wife.  At  least  such 
matches  ought  to  have  resulted  happily.  Yet  surprisingly  little 
is  ever  said  of  married  bliss  and  affection  arising  from  any  sort 
of  union.  While  this  social  situation  prevented  the  ancient 
dramatist  from  introducing  certain  scenes  which  are  the  stock 
in  trade  of  the  modern  playwright,  in  one  respect  it  was  of  service 
to  him.  Since  practically  no  attention  was  paid  to  the  girl's 
wishes  in  such  matters  and  almost  none  to  the  youth's,  the  speed 
with  which  engagements  could  be  made  and  uimiade  or  con- 
summated in  wedlock  aided  materially  in  observing  the  unity 
of  time.  The  plots  and  concentrated  action  of  many  plays  in 
the  New  Comedy  (cf.  for  example  Terence's  Andrian  Girl) 
would  be  quite  impossible  if  women  in  such  a  case  were  not 
passive  and  helpless  instruments  in  the  hands  of  others.  Pro- 
fessor Lounsbury  {op.  cit.,  pp.  120  ff.)  has  convincingly  shown 
what  a  stumbling-block  the  unity  of  time  proved  to  the  clas- 
sical dramatists  of  Western  Europe  who  tried  to  conform  to  the 
unities  but  Hved  in  a  society  to  which  such  rapidity  in  court- 
ship was  repugnant. 

In  Greek  tragedy  the  representation  of  women  is  strikingly 
different  from  that  in  comedy.  Whereas  in  this  respect  the 
latter  reacted  to  the  usage  of  contemporaneous  society,  tragedy 
reverted  to  the  practice  of  Homer.  In  the  Iliad  women  like 
Helen  and  Andromache,  suitably  attended,  not  only  traverse  the 
Trojan  streets  but  appear  on  the  walls  and  among  the  men 


28o  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

without  losing  caste  or  being  regarded  as  immodest;  and  though 
Helen's  elopement  with  his  brother  was  the  source  of  all  Troy's 
present  woes,  Hector  addresses  her  with  far  more  consideration 
than  he  shows  the  wayward  Paris.  In  the  fourth  book  of  the 
Odyssey  she  assists  Menelaus  at  their  Spartan  home  in  enter- 
taining the  strangers  from  Ithaca  and  Pylus,  and  freely  partici- 
pates in  the  conversation  without  embarrassment  and  as  an  equal. 
How  faithful  a  picture  these  poems  present  of  the  social  situation 
in  Homer's  own  day  is  largely  beside  the  question,  since  it  is 
evident  that  they  portray  the  events  of  a  bygone  age,  viz.,  the 
close  of  that  "Aegean "  or  "  Minoan  "  civilization  which  has  been 
unearthed  by  Schliemann  on  the  Greek  mainland  and  more  re- 
cently by  Evans  and  others  in  Crete. 

It  is  certain  that  women  must  have  lived  on  a  footing  of  greater 
equality  with  the  men  than  in  any  other  ancient  civilization,  and  we  see  in 
the  frescoes  of  Knossos  conclusive  indications  of  an  open  and  easy  associa- 
tion of  men  and  women,  corresponding  to  our  idea  of  "Society,"  at  the 
Minoan  Court  vmparalleled  till  our  own  day.^ 

The  extant  remains  clearly  demonstrate  that  Homer's  delinea- 
tion was  at  the  least  derived  from  a  genuine  tradition.  In  view 
of  the  fact  that  with  three  or  four  exceptions  (see  pp.  123  f .,  above) 
the  themes  of  tragedy  were  always  selected  from  Homeric  or 
other  mythological  sources,  it  was  natural  that  the  Greek  trage- 
dians should  take  over  from  him  a  social  systeiii  which  so 
conveniently  liberated  them  from  the  restrictions  of  contempo- 
raneous customs.  It  is  unnecessary  to  cite  passages  to  prove  that 
they  actually  did  this;  the  women  of  almost  every  tragedy  move 
about  with  a  freedom  and  conduct  themselves  with  an  independ- 
ence such  as  no  respectable  woman  among  the  playwright's  con- 
temporaries could  have  asserted. 

Nor  is  it  pecuHar  that  so  artificial  a  pose  is  not  consistently 
maintained.  Occasionally,  an  unconscious  sense  of  outraged 
propriety  causes  the  dramatist  to  put  words  into  a  woman's 
mouth  which  stand  in  glaring  contrast  with  the  rest  of  the  scene. 

'  Cf.  Hall,  The  Ancient  History  of  the  Near  East^  (1913),  P-  48. 


INFLUENCE  OF  NATIONAL  CUSTOMS  AND  IDEAS  281 

In  Euripides'  Andromache,  Hermione's  confidential  slave  brings 
their  dialogue  to  a  close  by  saying  to  her  mistress : 

Nay,  pass  within;  make  not  thyself  a  show 

Before  this  house,  lest  thou  shouldst  get  thee  shame, 

Before  this  palace  seen  of  men,  my  child. 

[Vss.  877  ff.;  Way's  translation] 

In  real  Hfe  these  words  would  furnish  an  excellent  motive  for 
withdrawing;  how  artificial  they  are  in  tragedy  appears  from  the 
fact  that,  though  a  strange-looking  man  is  now  seen  approaching, 
Hermione  remains  upon  the  scene!  In  the  same  author's 
Electra  (vss.  341  ff.)  that  heroine's  peasant-husband  finds  her 
conversing  with  her  brother  and  Pylades  (though  she  recognizes 
neither)  and  exclaims : 

How  now  ?     What  strangers  these  about  my  doors  ? 

....     Beseemeth  not 
That  with  young  men  a  wife  should  stand  in  talk. 

[Way's  translation] 

The  man's  lowly  birth  and  usually  deferential  attitude  toward 
his  wife  make  these  words  seem  especially  incongruous,  and 
Electra  promptly  apologizes  for  them.  Sometimes  these 
anachronisms  are  intentional  and  fulfill  a  deUberate  purpose. 
In  Euripides'  Phoenician  Maids  (vss.  88  fi'.),  Antigone  and  a  ser- 
vant are  about  to  appear  on  the  flat  roof  of  the  palace  in  order  to 
catch  a  glimpse  of  the  invading  army;  but  for  technical  reasons 
(see  pp.  177  f.,  above)  it  is  necessary  that  Antigone's  entrance 
be  shghtly  delayed.  Accordingly,  the  slave  comes  into  view 
first  and  is  made  to  afford  an  excuse  for  her  tardy  appearance 
which  would  have  been  legitimate  for  a  fifth-century  princess  but 
which  to  a  Homeric  woman  or  one  at  the  period  of  the  dramatic 
time  of  the  play  would  have  seemed  to  spring  from  false  modesty. 

Fair  flower  of  thy  sire's  house,  Antigone, 

Albeit  thy  mother  suffered  thee  to  leave 

Thy  maiden-bower  at  thine  entreaty,  and  moimt 

The  palace-roof  to  view  the  Argive  host. 

Yet  stay,  that  I  may  scan  the  highway  first, 

Lest  on  the  path  some  citizen  appear. 

And  scandal  light — for  me,  the  thrall,  'twere  naught, — 

On  thee,  the^princess.     [Way's  translation.] 


282  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

Again,  when  they  are  ready  to  withdraw,  the  approach  of  the 
chorus  reinforces  the  same  motive  (see  p.  93,  n.  i,  above): 

Daughter,  pass  in  ...  . 

Lo,  to  the  royal  halls  a  woman-throng 

Comes,  .... 

And  scandal-loving  still  is  womankind,  etc. 

[Vss.  193  ff.;  Way's  translation] 

As  intimated  at  the  beginning  it  would  be  possible  to  extend 
this  chapter  indefinitely.  One  more  point  must  suffice.  The 
beHef  was  widespread  among  the  Greeks  that  if  a  man's  body 
failed  of  burial  his  shade  was  forced  to  wander  for  a  season  on 
this  side  of  the  river  Styx  and  was  thus  cut  off  from  association 
with  the  great  majority  of  departed  spirits;  the  obligation  of 
attending  to  the  funeral  rites  rested  upon  the  nearest  kin  of  the 
deceased.  It  was  inevitable  that  a  doctrine  so  intimately 
connected  with  the  Hf e  of  the  people  should  frequently  appear  in 
their  literature.  Thus  the  Iliad  does  not  close  with  the  deaths 
of  Patroclus  and  Hector,  but  two  whole  books  are  devoted  to 
an  account  of  their  funerals.  Likewise  in  the  Odyssey,  however 
unsympathetic  has  been  his  deHneation  of  the  suitors'  conduct, 
nevertheless  Homer  does  not  pass  by  the  final  disposition  of  their 
bodies  in  silence  (cf .  xxiv.  417).  In  tragedy,  which  often  involves 
the  death  of  the  hero,  naturally  this  matter  is  frequently  men- 
tioned. In  Sophocles'  Antigone  it  provides  the  mainspring  of 
the  action.  Because  Polynices  fell  in  arms  against  his  native 
country,  Creon  forbade  his  burial,  but  before  the  call  of  a  duty 
so  sacred  Antigone  deemed  not  her  Kfe  precious  and  performed 
the  formal  rites  for  her  brother's  body  in  defiance  of  the  king's 
command.  According  to  modern  feeling,  when  the  hero  falls 
upon  his  sword  at  vs.  865  of  Sophocles'  Ajax,  the  denouement 
must  have  arrived  and  the  ending  be  close  at  hand;  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  play  continues  for  over  five  hundred  verses.  To  the 
Greeks  no  less  important  than  the  fact  of  his  death  was  the 
treatment  which  was  to  be  accorded  his  corpse,  and  the  honors 
which  Ajax  received  in  Attica  as  a  "hero"  in  the  technical, 
rehgious  sense  of  that  term  made  this  a  matter  of  far  more 


INFLUENCE  OF  NATIONAL  CUSTOMS  AND  IDEAS  283 

moment  than  would  have  been  true  even  in  the  case  of  an  ordi- 
nary man.  Aeschylus'  Seven  against  Thebes  concludes  with  a 
dirge  between  Antigone  and  Ismene  over  the  bodies  of  their  two 
brothers,  and  an  altercation  between  a  public  herald  and 
Antigone  in  which  she  declares  her  intention  of  defying  the 
state  edict  by  burying  Polynices.  The  genuineness  of  these 
scenes  has  been  assailed  on  technical  grounds  but  in  my  opinion 
unwarrantably  (see  p.  175,  above).  They  have  been  charged 
also  with  carrying  the  play  (and  the  trilogy)  past  the  natural 
stopping-point  and  to  an  inconclusive  close.  But  despite  any 
considerations  which  can  be  urged  in  its  support,  this  objection 
ignores  the  Greek  f  eeHng  concerning  the  paramount  importance  of 
interment  and  cannot  be  allowed.  Even  modern  audiences 
have  sometimes  felt  a  certain  sympathy  with  this  point  of  view 
"The  typical  Elizabethan  tragedy  does  not  deal  with  the  mis- 
takes of  a  night,  but  with  the  long — often  life-long — struggles 
of  its  hero.  Such  a  play  must  have  an  appropriate  ending. 
After  the  audience  has  sympathized  with  a  Hamlet  or  a  Brutus 
through  many  a  scene,  it  is  not  satisfied  with  a  sudden  death 
and  a  drop  of  a  curtain  with  a  thud.  It  asks  to  see  the  body 
solemnly  and  reverently  borne  off  the  stage  as  if  to  its  last 
resting  place.  And  this  was  the  respect  which  the  honored  dead 
received  on  the  EHzabethan  stage.  "^ 

'  Cf.  Albright,  The  Shakesperian  Stage  (1909),  pp.  148  f. 


I  find  them  one  and  all  to  be  merely 
examples  of  a  new  artificiality — the  arti- 
ficiality of  naturalism. — Gordon  Craig. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THEATRICAL  MACHINERY 
AND  DRAMATIC  CONVENTIONS^ 

f^y  We  have  alrea4y*at£dJJia-t  tbe  Greek  theater  had  no  facilities 
for  the  direct  representation  of  interior  scenes  (see  pp.  237-42, 
above) .  Of  the  many  subterfuges  there  mentioned  as  available 
for  or  utiHzed  by  the  ancient  playwrights  it  is  now  in  place  to 
elaborate  upon  one.  I  refer  to  the  eccyclema,  one  of  the  strangest 
and  most  conventional  pieces  of  machinery  that  any  theater 
has  ever  seen. 

If  it  were  desired  to  disclose  to  the  audience  the  corpse  of 
someone  who  has  just  been  done  to  death  behind  the  scenes, 
perhaps  with  the  murderers  still  gloating  over  their  crime,  or  to 
set  any  similar  interior  view  before  the  faithful  eyes  of  the  spec- 
tators, the  simplest  device  was  to  fling  open  the  appropriate  door 
of  the  scene-building  and  thus  to  display  the  desired  objects  or 
persons  close  behind  the  opening.  Whatever  may  be  said  for 
such  a  method  under  other  conditions,  in  the  Greek  theater  it 
ran  afoul  of  certain  practical  considerations.  For  example,  the 
wings  of  the  auditorium  extended  around  so  far  (Fig.  22)  that 
spectators  seated  there  could  have  obtained  no  satisfactory  view 
through  the  opened  doors  of  the  scene-building.     Nevertheless, 

'  In  addition  to  the  works  mentioned  on  pp.  xvii  and  xx  f .,  above,  cf .  Thirlwall, 
"On  the  Irony  of  Sophocles,"  Philological  Museum,  II  (1833),  4835.;  Neckel, 
Das  Ekkyklema  (1890);  Trautwein,  De  Prologorum  Plautinorum  Indole  atque 
Natura  (1890);  Dorpfeld-Reisch,  Das  griechische  Theater  (1896),  pp.  234  flf.;  Bethe, 
Prolegomena  zur  Geschichle  des  Theaters  im  Alterthum  (1896),  pp.  100  ff.;  Exon, 
"A  New  Theory  of  the  Eccyclema,"  Hermathena,  XI  (1901),  132  ff.;  Leo,  Der 
Monolog  im  Drama,  ein  Beitrag  zur  griechisch-romischen  Poetik  (1908);  Polczyk, 
De  Unitatibus  et  Loci  et  Temporis  in  Nova  Comoedia  Observatis  (1909);  Flickinger, 
"Dramatic  Irony  in  Terence,"  Classical  Weekly,  III  (1910),  202  ff.;  Arnold,  The 
Soliloquies  of  Shakespeare  (1911);  Fensterbusch,  Die  BUhne  des  Aristophanes 
(191 2),  pp.  51  ff.;  Harms,  De  Introitu  Personarum  in  Euripidis  et  Novae  Comoediae 
Fabulis  (1914);  and  Rees,  "The  Function  of  the  np6dvpov  in  the  Production  of 
Greek  Plays,"  Classical  Philology,  X  (1915),  134  ff. 

284 


THEATRICAL  MACHINERY  AND  CONVENTIONS  285 

during  the  last  quarter-century  not  a  few  scholars  have  main- 
tained that  this  was  the  sole  means  which  the  Greek  plJlywrights 
employed  for  such  a  purpose.  ^But  the  ancient  commentators 
often  speak  of  a  contrivance  whicn  was  used  to  bring  a  supposedly 
interior  scene  out  of  the  opened  doors  and  more  fully  into  the 
view  of  the  audience.  This  device  is  sometimes  described  as 
"turning"  or  "revolving"  {(tt picfyetvY  and  sometimes  as  being 
"rolled  out"  (e/c,  "out"+KUKXetJ/,  to  "wheel").  And  though 
eccyclema  (eKKVKkrjiJLa)  was  used  as  the  generic  term  I  am  per- 
suaded that  there  were  in  fact  two  types  of  machine  correspond- 
ing to  different  conditions  in  the  Athenian  theater. 
^  When  the  first  scene-building  was  erected,  about  465  B.C.,  it 
must  have  been  simple  and  unpretentious,  having  parascenia 
but  no  proscenium.  Probably  it  consisted  also  of  but  a  single 
story,  though  ift  Fig.  74^  I  have  given  it  a  low  clerestory  with 
small jvindqws  for  the  admission  of  Ught  into  the  scene-building. 
The  roof  would  thus  have  been  better  suited  for  the  occasional 
appearance  of  actors  upon  the  housetop,  as  in  Aeschylus'  Aga- 
memnon (458  B.C.).  In  addition  to  the  usual  doors  in  the 
parascenia  and  scene-building  (A,  C,  and  E  in  Fig.  74),  I  believe 
that  a  butterfly  valve,  to  the  base  of  which  a  semicircular  plat- 
form was  attached,  was  used  to  close  one  or  more  other  openings. 
In  Fig.  74  one  of  these  is  shown  closed  and  not  in  use  at  B  and 
another  open  and  in  action  at  D.  The  size  of  the  semicircular 
platform  would  be  limited  only  by  the  depth  of  the  scene- 
building  and  the  space  between  the  front  doors,  and  there  would 
be  ample  room  for  several  persons  upon  the  eccyclema  at  a  time. 
Therefore  when  a  deed  of  violence  had  been  committed  indoors 
it  was  possible,  by  revolving  one  of  the  valves  after  a  tableau 
had  been  posed  upon  its  platform,  to  place  a  quasi-interior  scene 

•  Cf.  scholia  to  Aeschylus'  Eumenides,  vs.  64,  Aristophanes'  Acharnians,  vs.  408 
and  Clouds,  vs.  184,  and  Clemens  Alexandrinus,  p.  11  (Potter). 

^  Fig.  74  is  specially  drawn,  but  owes  several  features  to  Figs.  93  f.  in  Dorpfeld- 
Reisch,  Das  gricchische  Theater.  Since  Exon's  discussion  and  drawing  of  the 
eccyclema  presuppose  a  theater  with  a  stage,  it  has  been  necessary  to  modify  his 
conception  so  as  to  bring  it  into  conformity  with  the  Dorpfeld  theory.     See  p.  348. 


286 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


before  thf  spectators.  This  is  Mr.  Exon's  theory  of  the  eccy- 
clema,  and  it  admirably  fits  the  conditions  in  the  Athenian 
theater  at  an  early  date. 

Thus,  Aeschylus'  Eumenides,  which  belongs  to  this  period 
(458  B.C.),  opens  with  a  monologue  of  the  Pythian  priestess 
(seep.  305,  below).  At  vs.  S3  she  enters  the  temple,  but  imme- 
diately returns,  so  shaken  by  the  sight  within  that  she  cannot 


Fig.  74. — The  Athenian  Theater  of  About  460  b.c.  Showing  the  Earlier  Type 
of  Eccyclema. 

See  pp.  28s,  n.  2,  and  348. 


walk,  but  crawls.  She  has  seen  a  blood-stained  man  (Orestes) 
at  the  omphalus  and  before  him  a  sleeping  band  of  hideous  Furies 
(vss.  34-63).  At  vs.  64  we  must  suppose  that  the  eccyclema 
revolves  with  Apollo,  Hermes,  and  Orestes  mounted  upon  it. 
The  first  named  bids  the  matricide  to  leave  Delphi  and  speed  to 
Athens  and  Hermes  to  guard  him  on  his  journey.  Whereupon 
the  two  step  from  the  platform  and  flee  through  one  of  the  parodi, 
and  the  eccyclema,  with  Apollo  still  upon  it,  is  revolved  back 
into  its  original  position  (vs.  93).     Here  we  may  note  a  curious 


THEATRICAL  MACHINERY  AND  CONVENTIONS  287 

incongruity;  the  platform  of  the  eccyclema  is  actually  out  of 
doors;  nominally  it  is  indoors.  If  the  latter  fact  were  kept 
steadfastly  in  mind,  a  character  could  not  step  directly  from  the 
eccyclema  into  the  orchestra  (as  Orestes  docs  here)  but  could 
only  pass  out  through  one  of  the  doors  after  the  eccyclema  had 
been  closed  again.  It  is  of  a  piece  with  this  that  the  characters 
are  not  only  spoken  of  as  being  indoors  but  sometimes  as  being 
out  of  doors.  At  vs.  94  the  ghost  of  Clytemnestra  appears  in 
the  orchestra  (or  perhaps  is  merely  heard  from  within  the  scene- 
building)  calhng  upon  the  Furies  to  waken  and  pursue  their 
escaping  prey.  Beginning  at  vs.  117  their  cries  and  ejaculations 
are  heard  at  intervals,  and  at  vs.  143  they  burst  into  the  orchestra 
for  their  entrance  song  (the  parodus) .  At  its  conclusion  (vs.  178) 
Apollo  comes  out  and  drives  them  from  his  precinct. 

Sometimes  the  opening  and  shutting  of  the  back  scene  is 
distinctly  referred  to.  Thus  in  Sophocles'  Ajax,^  vs.  344,  the 
coryphaeus  cries  to  the  attendants :  ''Open  there;  perhaps  even 
by  looking  upon  me  he  may  acquire  a  more  sober  mood";  and 
as  Tecmessa  replies  *'Lo!  I  open,"  the  door  of  the  hero's  tent 
is  opened  and  Ajax  is  seen  amid  the  slaughtered  cattle,  the 
victims  of  his  misdirected  vengeance.  After  playing  a  promi- 
nent lyrical  and  speaking  part  in  the  scene  which  follows,  Ajax 
orders  the  door  to  be  closed  with  all  speed  and  disappears  from 
view  (vs.  593). 

But  the  eccyclema  was  also  described  as  a  low,  trundle  plat- 
form,^ large  enough  to  accommodate  several  persons  and  narrow 
enough  to  be  pushed  through  the  doors  of  the  scene-building,  and 
this  type  would  be  more  suitable  for  the  conditions  which  ob- 
tained in  the  Athenian  theater  from  about  430  B.C.  (see  pp.  235 
and  292).^  [^  this  period  the  scene-building  was  slightly  moved 
and  raised  to  a  second  story;  it  was  embellished  with  a  wooden 
proscenium;  a  crane  came  into  use,  etc.  Under  these  conditions 
the  earlier  type  of  eccyclema  could  no  longer  be  so  large  nor  so 

'  See  p.  244,  n.  i,  above. 

'  Cf.  scholia  to  Aristophanes'  Acharnians,  vs.  408  and  Women  at  the  Thes- 
mophoria,  vs.  284;  Pollux  iv.  128,  and  Eustathius,  p.  976,  15.  J  See  pp.  339  fif. 


288  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

easily  seen,  being  hampered  in  both  particulars  by  the  pro- 
scenium. On  the  other  hand  the  new  type  could  be  made  as 
long  as  the  scene-building  was  deep  and  could  be  pushed  forward 
as  far  as  might  be  necessary/  Thus  in  Aristophanes'  A  charnians 
(425  B.C.),  Dicaeopolis  appears  before  the  house  of  Euripides, 
who  is  lounging  within  doors.  In  response  to  the  former's 
knock  and  summons  ''  to  be  wheeled  out "  Euripides  says  "I  will 
be  wheeled  out,"  and  is  pushed  upon  the  stage  {eKKVKkrjdrjn 
....  €KKVK\r]<ToixaL,  vs.  408).  The  conversation  which  ensues 
between  Dicaeopolis  outdoors  and  Euripides  supposedly  indoors 
does  not  conclude  until  vs.  479,  when  the  latter  exclaims:  ''The 
fellow  is  insolent;  shut  the  doors."  Perhaps  in  this  instance, 
for  parodic  effect,  a  trundle  couch  itself  is  shoved  through  the 
door  instead  of  a  stationary  couch  upon  a  trundle  platform.^ 
Very  similar  is  the  scene  in  Aristophanes'  Women  at  the  Thesmo- 
phoria  (about  411  B.C.),  where  Agathon  is  wheeled  out  before 
Euripides  and  Mnesilochus.  Here  again  the  verbs  eKKVKkoviJievos 
in  vs.  96  and  ela-KVKXrjadTOj  at  the  conclusion  of  the  scene  in 
vs.  265  do  not  permit  me  to  doubt  that  the  eccyclema,  or  a  comic 
substitute,  was  employed.  It  is  probably  no  accident  that 
Euripides  figures  in  both  of  these  scenes.  He  is  "hoist  with  his 
own  petar"  as  having  invented,  or  been  a  frequent  user  of,  this 
mechanism. 

The  passage  of  tragedy  in  which  most  authorities  concede 
the  employment  of  the  eccyclema  is  Euripides'  The  Madness 

y  of  Heracles  (vss.  1029-1402).  Chronologically  this  play  falls 
somewhere  between  the  Acharnians  and  the  Women  at  the 
Thesmophoria.  In  his  madness  Heracles  has  slain  his  wife  and 
three  children  within  the  palace  and  at  last  has  fallen  into  a  dazed 

y      torpor;    whereupon  his  friends  have  bound  him  to  a  broken 

^The  exostra  (i^,  "out"-\-d)6eTv,  to  "push")  seems  to  have  performed  about 
the  same  function  as  the  eccyclema;  cf.  Pollux  iv.  1 29;  perhaps  it  was  only  the  more 
specific  name  for  this  later  type. 

*  On  the  basis  of  dvapddrjv  in  vs.  399,  for  which  the  scholiasts  preserve  two 
interpretations,  some  writers  would  have  us  believe  that  Euripides  was  shown  in 
the  second  story.  Tracks  for  the  wheels  of  an  eccyclema  have  been  reported  on 
the  logium  level  of  the  theater  at  Eretria  (see  p.  107,  above). 


THEATRICAL  MACHINERY  AND  CONVENTIONS  289 

column.  As  the  chorus  chant  *'Alas!  Behold  the  doors  of  the 
stately  palace  fall  asunder"  (vss.  1029  f.),  the  hero  bound  to  y 
a  pillar  amid  the  slain  is  pushed  forward  on  the  eccyclema. 
At  vs.  1089  he  recovers  consciousness  and  begins  to  speak;  at 
vs.  1 1 23  Amphitryon  loosens  him;  and  at  vs.  1163  Theseus 
enters  and  finally  (vs.  1402)  persuades  him  to  descend  into  the 
orchestra. 

Still  another  theatrical  contrivance  was  called  the  /jtrjxavri  ^ 
("machine"),  which  about  430  B.C.  came  to  be  used  to  bring 
divinities  before  the  ancient  audiences.  This  was  a  crane  and 
pulley  arrangement,  mounted  in  one  of  the  side  wings  (para- 
scenia),  whereby  persons  or  objects  could  be  brought  from 
behind  the  second  story  (the  episcenium)  and  held  suspended 
in  the  air  or  let  down  upon  the  roof  of  the  scene-building  or  into 
the  orchestra,  or  could  be  lifted  in  an  opposite  direction.  This 
development  is  of  interest  also  from  the  structural  standpoint  as 
indicating  that  whatever  the  situation  may  have  been  earlier, 
at  least  from  this  time  on  the  scene-building  was  provided  with 
an  episcenium  (see  pp.  67  f.,  above). 

Before  considering  the  use  of  the  machina  further,  it  will  be 
worth  while  to  trace  briefly  how  gods  played  their  parts  in  the 
Greek  theater.  Prior  to  the  erection  of  a  scene-building,  about 
465  B.C.,  the  scene  was  perforce  laid  in  the  open  countryside  (see 
p.  226,  above)  and  the  playwrights  had  no  option  but  to  place 
divinities  and  mortals  in  immediate  juxtaposition,  after  the  / 
Homeric  fashion,  in  the  orchestra.  For  the  same  reason,  however 
these  characters  might  be  thought  of  as  travehng  before  they 
entered  the  theater,  they  rested  under  the  prosaic  necessity,  as 
soon  as  they  were  seen  by  the  spectators,  of  moving  upon  the 
solid  earth.  Thus  in  Aeschylus'  Prometheus  Bound,  Oceanus 
enters  at  vs.  284  with  the  words : 

From  my  distant  caves  cerulean 
This  fleet-pinioned  bird  hath  borne  me; 
Needed  neither  bit  nor  bridle, 
Thought  instinctive  reined  the  creature. 

[Blackie's  translation] 


290 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


As  a  preliminary  to  his  departure  at  vs.  397,  he  says: 

I  go,  and  quickly.     My  four-footed  bird 
Brushes  the  broad  path  of  the  limpid  air 
With  forward  wing:  right  gladly  will  he  bend 
The  wearied  knee  on  his  familiar  stall. 

[Blackie's  translation] 

It  will  be  noted  that  there  is  nothing  here  which  requires  or 
implies  flight  through  the  air  within  sight  of  the  audience. 
Evidently  Oceanus  rides  upon  a  fantastic  creature  which  is  rolled 
along  by  hidden  power  or  which  walks  on  disguised  human  legs. 
A  similar  interpretation  must  be  set  upon  the  lines  which  refer 
to  the  chorus'  mode  of  entrance  in  the  same  play.  At  vs.  124 
Prometheus  cries  out: 

Hark  again!    I  hear  the  whirring 
As  of  winged  birds  approaching; 
With  the  light  strokes  of  their  pinions 
Ether  pipes  ill-boding  whispers! — 
Alas!  Alas!  that  I  should  fear 
Each  breath  that  nears  me. 

To  which  the  Oceanides,  as  they  come  into  view,  reply: 

Fear  nothing;  for  a  friendly  band  approaches; 

Fleet  rivalry  of  wings 

Oared  us  to  this  far  height.     [Blackie's  translation] 

They  remain  upon  their  winged  car  until  the  Titan  invites  them, 
at  vs.  272,  to  step  upon  the  earth.  They  accept  in  the  following 
language : 

Not  to  sluggish  ears,  Prometheus, 

Hast  thou  spoken  thy  desire ; 

From  our  breeze-borne  seat  descending, 

With  light  foot  we  greet  the  ground. 

Leaving  ether  chaste,  smooth  pathway 

Of  the  gently  winnowing  wing. 

On  this  craggy  rock  I  stand.     [Blackie's  translation] 


THEATRICAL  MACfflNERY  AND  CONVENTIONS  291 

Here  again  there  is  no  need  of  supposing  that  the  choral  car  does 
not  rest  solidly  upon  the  ground.  Its  aerial  motion  is  entirely  off- 
scene. 

Even  at  a  later  period,  when  more  sophisticated  devices  were 
available,  the  gods  still  continued  on  occasion  to  use  strictly 
terrestrial  means  of  locomotion  and  to  stand  in  the  orchestra 
on  a  level  with  purely  human  characters.  For  example,  in 
Sophocles'  Ajax,  Athena  appears  before  the  tent  of  that  hero  and 
converses  first  with  Odysseus  and  then  with  Ajax.  In  Euripides' 
posthumous  Bacchanals,  Dionysus  is  seen  in  propria  persona 
before  the  house  of  Pentheus  and  afterward  (in  disguise)  enters 
and  departs  from  its  portals.  Still  again,  in  the  pseudo- 
Euripidean  Rhesus,  which  is  usually  regarded  as  a  fourth-century 
production,  Athena  comes  before  Hector's  tent  to  advise  and 
encourage  Odysseus  and  then  to  deceive  Paris  (cf.  especially 
vss.  627  f.).  On  the  contrary,  the  words  of  the  chorus  in  vss. 
885  f .  of  this  play  show  that  the  Muse  appears  above  their  heads. 
Thus  it  is  an  error  to  think  that  the  more  primitive  methods 
of  presenting  divinities  were  entirely  superseded  by  later  ones ; 
the  different  methods  existed  side  by  side  and  might  even  be  used 
in  the  same  play.  .,      "       ''     .'-   "  ' 

After  the  erection  of  a  scene-building,  about  465  B.C.,  it  became 
possible  to  employ  the  roof  as  a  higher  stage  for  certain  scenes. 
At  the  beginning  of  Aeschylus'  Agamemnon  the  guard  is  found 
posted  upon  the  palace  roof,  on  watch  for  the  last  in  the  series 
of  beacon  lights  from  Troy.  In  Euripides'  Phoenician  Maids, 
Antigone  and  an  old  servant  appear  on  top  of  the  royal  palace 
in  order  to  view  the  hostile  army  (cf.  vss.  88  ff.).  In  these  and 
other  instances  the  roof  of  the  scene-building  (or  at  a  later 
period  the  top  of  the  proscenium)  was  pressed  into  service. 
Moreover,  although  this  spot  was  of  course  not  the  exclusive 
place  of  speaking,  yet,  since  it  was  never  used  for  dancing  but 
only  for  speaking,  it  came  to  be  called  the  logium  (Xoyelov)  or 
''speaking-place"  par  excellence  (see  p.  59,  above).  This  ar- 
rangement was  especially  useful  when  a  scene  was  to  be  thought 


292  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

of  as  taking  place  in  heaven.  So  in  Aeschylus'  lost  play  entitled 
The  Weighing  of  Souls,  Zeus  was  represented  as  placing  the  fates 
of  Achilles  and  Memnon  into  the  scales,  while  Thetis  and  Eos 
prayed  for  their  sons.  The  same  meaning  is  assigned  the  logium 
also  in  Aristophanes'  Peace,  in  which  Trygaeus  on  the  back  of 
his  beetle  mounts  from  earth  to  heaven,  i.e.,  from  the  orchestra 
to  the  top  of  the  proscenium.  The  dramatists  were  not  slow 
to  perceive  that  no  other  part  of  the  theater  was  so  well  adapted 
for  the  awe-compelUng  theophanies  with  which  the  Greeks  were 
so  fond  of  terminating  their  tragedies.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
this  method  of  introducing  divinities  was  employed  in  several 
of  our  extant  plays,  but  the  absence  of  stage  directions  makes  it 
difl&cult  to  differentiate  the  instances  sharply. 

Finally  about  430  B.C.  the  machine  (ixrjxo-i^'n)  came  into  use. 
Possibly  this  is  employed  in  Euripides'  Medea  (431  B.C.)  in  order 
to  carry  away  that  heroine  and  the  bodies  of  her  children  in  the 
chariot  of  the  sun-god,  but  the  situation  is  doubtful.  It  is  almost 
certainly  a  mistake,  however,  to  attribute  the  machine,  as  some 
do,  to  the  time  of  Aeschylus.  Whether  Euripides  was  its 
inventor  or  not,  he  was  extraordinarily  fond  of  using  it.  Indeed 
it  has  been  remarked  that  "in  almost  every  play  of  Euripides 
something  flies  through  the  air."  At  any  rate  the  earliest  sure 
instance  of  the  machine  occurs  in  Euripides'  lost  BellerophoUj 
which  was  brought  out  some  time  before  425  b.c.  Byits  means  the 
hero  in  this  play  was  enabled  to  mount  from  earth  to  heaven,  i.e., 
from  the  orchestra  to  the  top  of  the  proscenium,  upon  the  winged 
steed,  Pegasus.  This  scene  is  parodied  in  Aristophanes'  Peace 
(421  B.C.),  in  which  Trygaeus  makes  a  similar  flight  on  the  back 
of  a  beetle.  Somewhat  later  the  same  device  enabled  Perseus 
in  Euripides'  lost  Andromeda  to  fly  to  the  rocks  upon  which  that 
heroine  had  been  bound.  In  Aristophanes'  Clouds  (423  B.C.) 
it  was  employed  to  suspend  Socrates  in  a  basket,  whence  he  could 
look  down  upon  the  troubles  of  mortals  and  survey  the  heavenly 
bodies.  Especially  important  is  the  situation  in  Euripides' 
Orestes  (408  B.C.).  Orestes  and  Py lades  have  fled  to  the  palace 
roof,  dragging  Hermione  with  them.    Menelaus  is  outside  the 


THEATRICAL  MACHINERY  AND  CONVENTIONS  293 

bolted  door  below.     Suddenly  Apollo  appears  (vs.  1625)  with 
Helen  at  his  side.     The  divinity  begins  to  speak  as  follows: 

Menelaus,  peace  to  thine  infuriate  mood : 

I,  Phoebus,  Leto's  son,  here  call  on  thee. 

Peace  thou,  Orestes,  too,  whose  sword  doth  guard 

Yon  maid,  that  thou  mayst  hear  the  words  I  bear. 

Helen,  whose  death  thou  hast  essayed,  to  sting 

The  heart  of  Menelaus,  yet  hast  missed, 

Is  here, — whom  wrapped  infolds  of  air  ye  see  (cv  aWepo<:  7rTv;(ars), — 

From  death  delivered,  and  not  slain  of  thee,  etc. 

[Way's  translation] 

The  itaHcized  words  show  that  Apollo  and  Helen  stand  above  ] 
all  the  other  actors  in  the  drama,  who  are  themselves  standing  I  ^ 
on  two  different  levels;  and  it  is  evident  that  the  machine  was' 
utiHzed  for  this  purpose. 

The  last  example  is  typical  of  a  large  class  of  instances  in 
which  a  divinity  appears  as  a  splendid  climax  to  the  events  of 
the  play.  It  is  plain  that  in  all  or  practically  all  of  these  the  god 
is  raised  above  the  other  performers,  as  would  be  only  appropri- 
ate for  an  effective  close;  but  whether  the  deity  merely  came 
forward  upon  the  logium  or  was  brought  into  view  by  means  of  a 
machine  is  not  always  an  easy  matter  to  determine.  By  a 
natural  extension  of  meaning,  however,  such  an  apparition  at 
the  close  of  a  play  came  to  be  called  a  ''god  from  the  machine"  / 
{Beds  airo  fxrjxdvrjs ;  deus  ex  machina)  regardless  of  the  method  used 
for  his  appearance.  By  a  further  extension  of  meaning  firixavr} 
was  used  to  designate  any  mechanical  artifice,  such  as  the  "long  t^ 
arm  of  coincidence,"  for  example.  Thus  Aristotle  criticized  the 
ixrixo-vv  in  Euripides'  Medea,  but  from  another  passage  it  becomes 
clear  that  he  was  referring,  not  to  the  use  of  an  actual  machine 
at  the  denouement,  but  only  to  the  improbability  involved  in  the 
appearance  of  King  Aegeus  in  the  course  of  the  play.^ 

There  are  several  ancient  notices  which  refer  to  the  use  that 
inexpert  playwrights  made  of  the  deus  ex  machina  in  order  to 
extricate  their  characters  when  the  plot  had  become  compHcated 

'  Cf.  Poetics  I4S4&I  and  1461&21. 


294  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

beyond  the  possibility  of  disentanglement  by  purely  natural 
means.  It  would  seem  that  in  the  hands  of  second-rate  poets 
the  deus  was  frequently  so  employed.  In  particular  it  has  often 
been  charged  that  Euripides  was  guilty  of  this  practice,  but  in  my 
opinion  without  due  warrant.  It  is  true  that  he  concluded  fully 
half  of  his  eighteen  extant  plays  in  this  manner,  besides  several 
other  instances  in  the  plays  now  lost;  but  with  only  one  exception 
his  principal  motive  was  never  to  relieve  himself  of  the  embarrass- 
ment into  which  the  confusion  of  his  plot  had  involved  him. 
The  truth  of  this  statement  appears  most  clearly  in  the  Iphigenia 
among  the  Taurians  (see  pp.  201  f.,  above).  At  vs.  1392  all  the 
immediate  requirements  of  the  drama  have  been  met:  Orestes, 
Iphigenia,  and  Pylades  have  made  good  their  escape,  bearing 
the  image  of  Artemis.  The  poet  could  have  stopped  here  without 
requiring  the  aid  of  a  divinity.  Instead  he  preferred  to  plunge 
himself  into  such  a  plight  as  only  a  deity  could  rescue  him  from, 
for  in  the  succeeding  verses  a  messenger  reports  that  contrary 
wind  and  wave  are  driving  the  refugees  back  to  land.  King 
Thoas  just  has  time  to  issue  quick  commands  when  Athena 
appears  (vs.  1435)  and  bids  him  cease  his  efforts.  Surely  the 
playwright's  difficulties  here  are  self-imposed  and  must  be 
regarded  as  having  furnished  the  excuse  rather  than  the  reason 
for  the  use  of  the  deus  ex  machina.  What  other  objects  might 
he  have  had  in  mind?  It  has  already  been  suggested  (p.  202, 
above)  that  this  device  enabled  him  to  bring  the  melodramatic  "^ 
course  of  the  action  to  a  more  dignified  and  truly  tragic  close. 
Also  he  thus  found  it  possible  to  rescue  the  chorus,  who  had  been 
promised  a  safe  return  to  Greece  but  had  been  left  behind.  But 
the  fact  that  the  chorus  in  the  same  poet's  Helen  is  irremediably 
left  in  the  lurch  after  the  same  fashion  (see  pp.  160  f.,  above)  im- 
plies that  this  was  a  lesser  consideration.  Again,  toward  the  close 
of  Enripides'  Suppliants,  Adrastus  has  vowed  the  eternal  gratitude 
of  Argos  to  Athens  for  having  secured  the  return  of  her  slain. 
But  the  appearance  of  Athena  at  vs.  1183  makes  her  a  witness 
to  this,  and  her  demand  that  Adrastus'  promise  be  ratified  by 
an  oath  converts  it  into  a  sacred  obligation. 


THEATRICAL  MACHINERY  AND  CONVENTIONS  295 

But  after  all  these  are  only  occasional  motives,  while  a  more 
important  result  is  obtained  again  and  again.  In  the  Iphigenia, 
Euripides  took  advantage  of  Athena's  presence  to  have  her 
foretell  the  heroine's  later  career  and  final  decease  in  Attica.  It 
is  urmecessary  to  point  out  that  the  presence  of  a  divinity  was 
highly  serviceable  and  appropriate  for  such  a  purpose.  We  have 
already  seen  (p.  259,  above)  that  exactly  the  same  situation 
obtains  in  the  A?tdromache.  In  this  way  the  poet  was  enabled  to 
burst  through  the  restricting  influences  which  caused  the  normal 
observance  of  the  unities  of  time  and  place  and  to  include  other 
days  and  other  places  within  the  purview  of  his  play.  Fre- 
quently there  is  included  in  this  an  aetiological  explanation  of 
rites  which  were  observed  in  the  dramatist's  own  day.  Thus  in 
Euripides'  Hippolytus  (vss.  1423  £f.),  Artemis  promises  that  the 
maidens  of  Troezen  will  perform  certain  ceremonies  in  honor 
of  the  hero's  sufferings,  and  in  the  Iphigenia  among  the  Taurians 
(vss.  14465.),  Athena  enjoins  upon  Orestes  to  establish  the 
temple  and  worship  of  Artemis  Tauropolos  at  Brauron  in  Attica. 

It  would  take  too  long  to  examine  here  every  instance  of  the 
deus  ex  machina  in  Euripides.  For  that  I  must  refer  the  reader 
to  Professor  Decharme's  interesting  discussion.^  Suffice  it  to 
state  that  in  every  case  the  element  of  prediction  is  brought  into 
play.  This  appears  even  in  the  Orestes,  the  only  piece  in  which 
the  theophany  is  frankly  and  undisguisedly  employed  to  provide 
Euripides  with  a  denouement.  Orestes  and  Electra  stand 
condemned  to  death  for  having  murdered  their  mother.  Being 
disappointed  in  the  hope  of  receiving  succor  from  their  uncle, 
Menelaus,  they  determine  to  punish  him  for  his  recreancy  by 
slaying  Helen  and  to  hold  his  daughter  Hermione  as  a  hostage  in 
order  to  force  him  to  secure  the  recall  of  the  decree  against  them. 
Helen  has  now  supposedly  been  slain,  Menelaus  stands  angry  and 
bafl3ed  before  the  bolted  doors,  Orestes  with  his  sword  at 
Hermione's  throat  taunts  him  from  the  palace  roof.  If  any 
regard  is  to  be  paid  to  verisimilitude  or  human  psychology,  no 

'  Cf.  Euripides  and  the  Spirit  of  His  Dramas,  pp.  263  ff.,  Loeb's  translation 
(1906). 


296  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

reconciliation  between  these  conflicting  elements  is  possible; 
but  at  this  moment  Apollo  appears,  and  his  fiat  (see  p.  293) 
resolves  every  feud.  The  god  goes  beyond  this,  however,  and  in 
typical  fashion  predicts  (or  ordains)  the  later  career  of  each 
character. 

It  is  but  fair  to  Euripides  to  state  that  even  Sophocles,  that 
master  of  dramatic  writing,  found  the  deus  ex  machina  as 
indispensable  in  his  Philoctetes  as  did  the  former  in  his  Orestes. 
Philoctetes  had  come  into  possession  of  the  bow  of  Heracles,  and 
having  been  abandoned  on  the  island  of  Lemnos  by  the  leaders 
of  the  Greek  expedition  against  Troy  he  cherished  an  implacable 
hatred  against  his  former  associates.  But  now  the  Greeks  have 
received  an  oracle  to  the  effect  that  the  person  and  weapons  of 
Philoctetes  are  necessary  for  the  capture  of  Ilium.  In  Sophocles' 
play  the  task  of  meeting  these  conditions  has  been  laid  upon  the 
wily  Odysseus  and  the  noble  Neoptolemus.  By  a  trick  they 
succeed  in  gaining  possession  of  the  bow  and  by  another  trick 
are  in  a  fair  way  of  enticing  the  inexorable  hero  on  board  a  ship 
bound  for  Troy,  when  the  generous  son  of  Achilles  refuses  to 
proceed  further  with  so  infamous  a  scheme  and  finally  returns 
his  weapons  to  Philoctetes.  This  development  was  inevitable  if 
the  character  of  Neoptolemus  is  to  be  maintained  consistently; 
but  it  leaves  the  characters  in  a  hopeless  deadlock.  At  this 
juncture  (vs.  1408)  the  deified  Heracles  appears  to  reveal  the 
purposes  of  Zeus,  and  Philoctetes  abandons  his  resentment. 
Here  again  the  element  of  prophecy  is  associated  with  the  deus 
ex  machina,  Heracles  foretelling  the  healing  of  Philoctetes' 
wound  and  his  future  career  of  glory  at  Troy  and  elsewhere. 

Much  nonsense  has  been  indulged  in  by  modern  authorities 
in  ridiculing  this  contrivance  of  the  Greek  theater.  This  has 
sprung  partly  from  a  misapprehension  of  the  real  situation  and 
partly  from  a  failure  to  realize  that  devices  fully  as  forced  and 
artificial  have  been  employed  by  the  supreme  masters  of  dramatic 
art  in  modern  times.  Of  course  I  do  not  mean  that  an  actual 
fjirixavr]  has  often  been  brought  to  view  in  modern  theaters  or  that 
divinities  have  frequently  trod  the  stage.     Nevertheless  a  close 


THEATRICAL  MACHINERY  AND  CONVENTIONS  297 

equivalent  of  the  deus  ex  machina,  in  the  broader  sense,  has  not 
rarely  been  resorted  to.  For  example,  at  the  close  of  Shake- 
speare's Cymheline  the  king  declares,  as  the  result  of  an  oracle: 

Although  the  victor,  we  submit  to  Caesar 
And  to  the  Roman  empire,  promising 
To  pay  our  wonted  tribute. 

Again,  in  As  You  Like  It  everything  has  been  satisfactorily 
settled  except  one  point:  the  spectators  would  hardly  rest 
content  to  think  of  the  characters  as  spending  the  remainder  of 
their  lives  in  the  Forest  of  Arden.  This  detail  is  adjusted  by 
means  of  a  messenger,  who  reports  that  the  usurping  duke  had 
addressed  a  mighty  power  with  which  to  capture  his  brother 
and  put  him  to  the  sword : 

And  to  the  skirts  of  this  wild  wood  he  came; 
Where  meeting  with  an  old  religious  man, 
After  some  question  with  him,  was  converted 
Both  from  his  enterprise  and  from  the  world; 
His  crown  bequeathing  to  his  banish 'd  brother, 
And  all  their  lands  restored  to  them  again 
That  were  with  him  exiled. 

Finally,  not  to  extend  this  list  unduly,  in  Moliere's  Tartufe  by 
the  time  that  Orgon  has  at  length  unmasked  the  hypocrite  he 
had  played  into  his  hand  to  such  an  extent,  by  deeding  him  his 
property  and  by  intrusting  him  with  incriminating  papers,  that 
it  is  impossible  to  conceive  how  he  can  be  extricated.  But  at 
this  crisis  an  officer  of  police  in  the  name  of  the  French  king 
(almost  a  divine  figure  in  those  days)  rescues  him  from  his 
troubles : 

Monsieur,  dismiss  all  anxious  fears.    We  live  beneath  a  prince  the  foe 
of  fraud, — a  prince  whose  eyes  can  penetrate  all  hearts;  whose  mind  the  art 

of  no  impostor  can  deceive This  one  was  powerless  to  mislead  him ; 

those  wily  schemes  he  instantly  detected,  discerning  with  his  keen  sagacity 
the  inmost  folds  of  that  most  treacherous  heart.  Coming  to  denounce  you, 
the  wretch  betrayed  himself;  and  by  the  stroke  of  some  high  justice  the 
prince  discovered  him,  by  his  own  words,  to  be  a  great  impostor,  .... 
In  a  word,  the  monarch  ....  ordered  me  to  follow  him  here  and  see  to 
what  lengths  his  impudence  would  go,  and  then  to  do  justice  on  him  for  your 


298  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

sake.  Yes,  I  am  ordered  to  take  from  his  person  the  papers  which  he  boasts 
of  holding,  and  place  them  in  your  hands.  The  king,  of  his  sovereign  power, 
annuls  the  deed  you  made  him  of  your  property;  and  he  forgives  you  for 
the  secret  to  which  your  friendship  for  an  exile  led  you.  [Wormeley's 
translation.] 

Who,  with  such  examples  of  artificial  and  mechanical  denoue- 
ments before  him,  will  cast  the  first  stone  at  the  deus  ex  machina 
of  the  Greeks  ?^ 

In  a  technical  sense  "prologue"  came  to  denote  the  histrionic 
passage  before  the  entrance  song  of  the  chorus  (the  parodus) 
(see  p.  192,  above).  Such  prologues  are  not  found  in  Aeschylus' 
Suppliants  and  Persians,  which  begin  with  the  choral  parodus. 
The  earliest  prologue  of  which  we  have  knowledge  occurred  in 
Phrynichus'  lost  play,  the  Phoenician  Women  (476  B.C.),  in  which 
a  eunuch  opens  the  action  by  spreading  places  in  the  orchestra 
for  the  counselors  of  the  Persian  empire  and  at  the  same  time 
announcing  the  defeat  of  Xerxes  in  Greece.  On  the  other  hand, 
according  to  a  late  authority,  prologues  were  the  invention  of 
Thespis.^  In  my  opinion  this  contradiction  is  to  be  explained 
as  a  confusion  between  the  technical  and  non-technical  uses  of 
the  term.  There  is  every  reason  for  believing  that  prologues  in 
the  technical  sense  just  mentioned  did  not  go  back  to  the  time 
of  Thespis.  But  the  fully  developed  prologue  was  naturally 
employed  as  a  vehicle  for  the  exposition,  and  the  task  of  acquaint- 
ing his  audience  with  data  preliminary  to  the  action  and  necessary 
for  comprehending  the  plot  of  course  confronted  Thespis  no  less 
than  later  playwrights.  Now  it  is  evident  that  he  could  accom- 
plish this  in  any  one  of  three  ways :  (i)  He  could  utilize  the  choral 
parodus  for  this  purpose,  as  Aeschylus  partially  did  in  his 
Agamemnon.     Though  this  play  has  a  prologue,  the  parodus  is 

'  According  to  late  authorities  Greek  theaters  were  provided  with  revolving 
prisms  {periacli)  with  a  different  view  painted  on  each  of  their  three  sides.  These 
could  be  turned  to  indicate  a  change  of  scene.  There  is  no  evidence,  however,  that 
this  contrivance  was  employed  during  the  classical  period  of  Greek  drama,  although 
Dorpfeld  thought  that  a  place  was  provided  for  it  in  the  earlier  parascenia  at 
Epidaurus  (cf.  Das  griechische  Theater,  p.  126).  The  geranos  ("crane")  and  the 
krade  ("branch")  were  probably  only  other  names  for  the  /Jirjxo-v^. 

"  Cf.  Themistius  Oration  xxvi,  316  D. 


THEATRICAL  MACHINERY  AND  CONVENTIONS  299 

employed  to  rehearse  the  story  of  Iphigenia's  sacrifice  and  other 
pertinent  events.  Somewhat  similar  is  the  parodus  of  Aeschylus' 
Persians,  which  in  the  absence  of  a  regular  prologue  opens  the 
play.  Accordingly,  the  ancient  argument  to  this  play  remarks : 
"A  chorus  of  elders  'speaks  the  prologue'"  (w poKoyi^eL) ,  using 
the  word  in  a  popular  sense.  (2)  The  drama  might  begin  with 
a  dialogue  or  duet  between  the  chorus  and  an  actor,  somewhat 
in  the  manner  of  the  pseudo-Euripidean  Rhesus.  It  is  perhaps 
unlikely  that  this  technique  was  employed  as  early  as  Thespis. 
(3)  The  exposition  might  be  intrusted  to  the  character  who 
speaks  first  after  the  choral  parodus.  Since  the  drama  was  then 
in  the  one-actor  stage,  such  a  "prologue"  would  necessarily  be 
monologic.  Some  justification  for  this  nomenclature  may  be 
found  in  the  ancient  argument  to  Sophocles'  Oedipus  at  Colonus, 
where  it  is  stated  that  Oedipus  7rpoXo7ifet.  Since  Antigone  and 
a  stranger  take  part  in  this  prologue  as  well  as  Oedipus,  the  verb 
must  here  mean  that  Oedipus  "makes  the  first  speech."  Now 
whatever  may  be  true  about  Thespis  having  employed  (i)  or  (2), 
he  certainly  must  have  employed  the  third  type  of  exposition, 
and  a  "prologue"  of  this  non-technical  sort  he  can  truthfully 
be  said  to  have  invented. 

It  is  a  peculiarity  of  Euripides  that  he  oftentimes  combined 
startling  innovations  with  a  reversion  to  archaic,  or  at  least  much 
earher,  technique.  Therefore,  it  is  not  surprising  that  he 
preferred  prologues  which  smack  somewhat  of  this  primitive 
tj^e.  Of  course  this  statement  is  not  to  be  taken  so  Hterally 
as  to  imply  that  he  placed  his  prologues  after  the  parodus.  It 
means  that  instead  of  retailing  the  essential  antecedents  of  the 
action  piecemeal  in  the  manner  of  Sophocles  and  Ibsen,  he  regu- 
larly set  the  whole  body  of  data  before  the  spectators  at  once  in 
an  opening  soliloquy.  This  is  normally  succeeded  by  a  dialogue 
with  which  the  dramatic  action  really  begins.  In  other  words 
there  is  a  prologue  within  a  prologue:  the  histrionic  passage 
before  the  choral  parodus  (the  prologue  in  the  technical  sense) 
opens  with  a  sharply  differentiated  monologue  (a  prologue  in 
the  old,  non-technical  sense).     In  my  opinion  the  latter  must  be 


300  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

regarded  as  consciously  harking  back  to  Thespian  practice.  An 
excellent  example  of  this  technique  is  afforded  by  the  Alcestis? 
Here  Apollo  apostrophizes  the  palace  of  Admetus,  thus  revealing 
the  location  of  the  scene  (see  p.  206).  He  then  proceeds  to 
relate  in  detail  how  he  had  been  forced  to  serve  in  the  house  of  a 
mortal,  how  considerately  Admetus  had  treated  him,  how  in 
gratitude  he  had  tricked  the  Fates  into  permitting  Admetus  to 
present  a  voluntary  substitute  when  premature  death  threatened 
him,  how  Queen  Alcestis  is  the  only  one  found  wilHng  to  die  for 
the  king,  that  this  is  the  day  appointed  for  her  vicarious  act,  etc. 
It  is  noticeable  that  scant  regard  is  here  paid  to  dramatic  illusion : 
Apollo  tells  what  the  spectators  need  to  know  and  because  they 
need  to  know  it.  He  explains  his  leaving  the  palace  on  the 
ground  of  the  pollution  which  the  death  of  Alcestis  would  bring 
upon  all  indoors  at  the  time  (vs.  22).  But  no  excuse  is  provided 
for  his  long  soliloquy.  We  have  seen  that  the  apostrophe  to  the 
palace  served  another  purpose;  and  in  any  case,  since  (unlike 
the  elements)  houses  were  never  regarded  by  the  Greeks  as  either 
divine  or  even  animate,  it  would  be  no  adequate  motivation  for 
the  monologue.  The  prologue  concludes  and  the  action  proper 
is  set  in  motion  by  a  quarrel  between  Apollo  and  Death,  who  is 
now  seen  approaching. 

This  prologue  is  one  of  Euripides'  best.  They  are  often 
interminable  and  marred  by  long  genealogies  and  other  jejune 
matter.  Some  of  them  are  not  undeserving  of  the  strictures 
which  critics,  both  ancient  and  modern,  have  heaped  upon  them. 
Yet  they  served  many  useful  purposes,  too,  and  there  is  no  war- 
rant for  utterly  condemning  the  type  as  a  whole.  We  have 
already  seen  (p.  258,  above)  that  such  a  device  enabled  a  drama- 
tist to  circumvent  the  conditions  which  caused  the  conventional 
observance  of  the  unities  of  time  and  place  and  to  bring  earlier 
events  more  explicitly  within  the  scope  of  his  play.  The  fact 
that  Euripides  more  often  chose  different  themes  for  the  plays 
in  each  group  instead  of  writing  trilogies  or  tetralogies  made 
brevity  of  exposition  a  desideratum.  Again,  a  desire  for  novelty 
and  the  fact  that  Aeschylus  and  Sophocles  had  anticipated  him 


THEATRICAL  MACHINERY  AND  CONVENTIONS  301 

in  so  many  of  his  subjects  caused  him  to  depart  widely  from  the 
traditional  accounts.  Unless  some  warning  of  this  were  given, 
it  would  sometimes  be  almost  impossible  for  the  ordinary  spec- 
tator to  comprehend  the  action,  and  no  other  place  was  so 
appropriate  for  such  an  explanation  as  the  prologue.  For 
example,  in  the  Helen,  Euripides  abandoned  the  account  given 
by  Homer  and  most  others  in  favor  of  the  version  invented  by 
Stesichorus.  The  audience  had  to  comprehend  not  only  that 
Helen  had  been  the  chaste  and  loyal  wife  of  Menelaus  throughout 
but  also  that  there  were  two  Helens — one  the  true  Helen  who 
spent  the  years  of  the  Trojan  War  in  Egypt,  and  the  other  a 
cloud-image  Helen  who  eloped  with  Paris  and  was  recovered  by 
Menelaus  at  the  capture  of  the  city.  Surely  a  very  clear  state- 
ment was  required  to  render  such  a  revamping  of  the  legend  clear 
to  everyone.  Even  the  genealogical  table  was  not  without  its 
utihty  in  this  prologue,  for  the  Egyptian  king  Theoclymenus 
and  his  sister  would  mean  nothing  to  most  spectators  until  their 
lineage  was  traced  to  the  familiar  names  of  Proteus  and  Nereus. 

Quite  apart  from  these  considerations,  however,  there  is  still 
something  to  be  said  for  the  Euripidean  type  of  prologue. 
Knowing  that  the  spectators  had  no  playbill,  whatever  the 
dramatist  wished  to  tell  them  concerning  the  antecedents  of  the 
dramatic  action  he  had  to  tell  them  in  the  play  itself.  And 
though  the  plots  of  most  tragedies  were  based  upon  oft- told 
myths,  yet  we  have  the  authority  of  Aristotle'  for  the  statement 
that  even  the  best-known  tales  were  known  to  but  a  few. 
Furthermore,  the  Greek  practice  of  attacking  the  series  of 
dramatic  incidents,  not  at  the  beginning  or  in  the  middle,  but 
only  at  the  end,  of  excluding  everything  but  the  culmination  or 
fifth  act  (see  pp.  265  f.,  above),  prevented  the  earHer  events  from 
actually  being  represented  upon  the  stage.  There  was,  therefore, 
a  considerable  body  of  facts  which  the  poet  had  either  to  relate 
frankly  and  succinctly  in  a  mass  at  the  beginning  or  to  attempt 
to  weave  into  the  play  and  disclose  gradually  as  they  were 
needed.     Euripides   preferred   the   former   method,    which   he 

*  Cf.  Poetics  1451J26. 


302  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

employed  in  all  of  his  extant  plays  except  possibly  the  Iphigenia 
at  Aulis.  It  was  borrowed  by  Sophocles  in  his  Maidens  of 
Trachis,  was  extensively  imitated  by  Aristophanes  despite  his 
caustic  criticisms,  and  was  exceedingly  popular  among  the 
writers  of  New  Comedy.  Even  in  modern  times,  notwithstand- 
ing all  that  has  been  said  against  it  both  by  ancients  and  moderns, 
there  have  always  been  playwrights  to  whom  this  manner  of 
approach  has  made  the  stronger  appeal.  The  principle  involved 
is  well  stated  by  a  contemporaneous  student  of  dramatic  tech- 
nique:^ ''It  may  not  unreasonably  be  contended,  I  think,  that, 
when  an  exposition  cannot  be  thoroughly  dramatized — that  is, 
wrung  out,  in  the  stress  of  the  action,  from  the  characters  pri- 
marily concerned — it  may  best  be  dismissed,  rapidly  and  even 
conventionally,  by  any  not  too  improbable  device." 

Frequently  the  opening  soliloquy  of  the  prologue  was  spoken 
by  a  divinity,  and  in  Euripides'  Hecabe  it  is  spoken  by  a  ghost ! 
Their  prophetic  powers  enabled  such  personages  to  predict  the 
course  of  the  action.  Thus  in  Euripides'  Hip  poly  tus  (vss.  42  £f.), 
Aphrodite  declares  that  Phaedra's  love  for  her  stepson  will  be 
made  known  to  his  father,  whose  curses  will  bring  Hippolytus  to 
destruction,  and  that  Phaedra  herself  will  die,  though  with  name 
untarnished;  and  these  things  actually  come  to  pass  in  the  play. 
Indeed,  an  outstanding  difference  between  ancient  and  modern 
tragedy,  doubtless  arising  from  the  fact  that  the  former  dealt 
with  traditional  material  whose  outlines  were  fairly  well  known 
to  at  least  some  and  could  be  modified  only  within  certain  limits, 
consists  in  this,  that  the  Greek  tragedians  usually  made  Uttle 
or  no  attempt  to  keep  their  audiences  in  the  dark  as  to  the  out- 
come. It  is  true  that  there  are  occasional  exceptions.  For 
example,  in  Euripides'  Ion,  Hermes  explains  in  the  prologue  that 
Apollo  is  Ion's  father  by  a  secret  union,  but  expressly  states  that 
the  Delphian  deity  will  bring  the  youth  into  his  just  deserts 
without  letting  his  own  misdeed  become  known.  Consequently 
when  Ion's  very  life  seems  to  depend  upon  his  parentage  tran- 
spiring, the  hearts  of  the  spectators  are  harried  with  fear  for  his 

'  Cf.  Archer,  Play-making,  p.  119. 


THEATRICAL  MACHINERY  AND  CONVENTIONS  303 

safety  until  Athena  appears  in  her  brother's  stead  as  deus  ex 
machina  and  unexpectedly  reveals  his  secret  after  all.  Euripides' 
Orestes  provides  another  instance  of  an  attempt  to  baffle  the 
spectators.  The  contrast  of  a  few  such  cases,  however,  ser^■es 
only  to  call  attention  to  the  more  usual  procedure.  Here  again 
the  Greek  practice  has  not  lacked  defenders.  Lessing  wrote:* 
"  I  am  far  removed  from  believing  with  the  majority  of  those  who 
have  written  on  the  dramatic  art  that  the  denouement  should 
be  hid  from  the  spectator.  I  rather  think  it  would  not  exceed 
my  powers  to  rouse  the  very  strongest  interest  in  the  spectator 
even  if  I  resolved  to  make  a  work  where  the  denouement  was 
revealed  in  the  first  scene.  Everything  must  be  clear  for  the 
spectator,  he  is  the  confidant  of  each  person,  he  knows  everything 
that  occurs,  everything  that  has  occurred,  and  there  are  hundreds 
of  instances  when  we  cannot  do  better  than  to  tell  him  straight 
out  what  is  going  to  occur."  A  somewhat  different  point  of  view 
is  presented  by  Professor  Murray  f  "But  why  does  the  prologue 
let  out  the  secret  of  what  is  coming?  Why  does  it  spoil  the 
excitement  beforehand  ?  Because,  we  must  answer,  there  is  no 
secret,  and  the  poet  does  not  aim  at  that  sort  of  excitement. 
A  certain  amount  of  plot-interest  there  certainly  is :  we  are  never 
told  exactly  what  will  happen  but  only  what  sort  of  thing;  or 
we  are  told  what  will  happen  but  not  how  it  will  happen.  But 
the  enjoyment  which  the  poet  aims  at  is  not  the  enjoyment  of 
reading  a  detective  story  for  the  first  time ;  it  is  that  of  reading 
Hamlet  or  Paradise  Lost  for  the  second  or  fifth  or  tenth." 

But  the  prologue  was  not  always  spoken  by  a  divinity; 
oftentimes  a  mortal  appeared  in  this  capacity.  Sometimes  this 
mortal  took  no  further  part  in  the  dramatic  action,  and  sometimes 
he  did.  In  the  latter  case  he  occasionally  displayed  as  prologist 
a  greater  knowledge  of  the  situation  and  of  what  was  going  to 
happen  than  he  afterward  seemed  to  possess  as  an  acting  char- 
acter. This  difficulty  occurs  in  Plautus'  Braggart  Captain. 
At  vss.  145  ff.  (in  the  prologue)  Palaestrio  boasts  how  he  will 

'  Cf.  Hamburgische  Dramaturgle,  Zimmern's  translation,  p.  377. 
^  Cf.  Euripides  atid  His  Age,  p.  206. 


304 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


cause  his  fellow-slave  "not  to  see  what  he  has  seen"  and  even 
explains  the  trick  which  will  be  used  for  this  purpose.  But  in  the 
scene  following  the  prologue,  when  he  must  make  good  his 
braggadocio,  he  seems  as  perplexed  and  confounded  as  would 
one  who  had  not  foreseen  this  emergency. 

In  later  times  the  soHloquy  of  the  prologist  was  sometimes 
deferred  until  after  an  introductory  scene  or  two.  Such  "inter- 
nal" prologues  occur  in  the  Casket  and  the  Braggart  Captain  of 
Plautus.  The  meager  beginnings  of  this  system  can  be  traced 
in  Aristophanes  and  Euripides,  but  there  is  no  evidence  for  its 
full  development  prior  to  the  time  of  Alexis,  a  poet  of  Middle 
Comedy.  His  nephew,  Menander,  who  belonged  to  the  New 
Comedy,  employed  it  in  his  Hero  and  Girl  with  Shorn  Locks.  In 
Plautus'  Amphitruo,  Mercury  speaks  an  opening  prologue  (vss. 
1-152),  then  engages  in  a  dialogue  with  Sosia  (vss.  153-462), 
after  which  he  continues  the  prologue  for  some  thirty  additional 
verses ! 

The  six  comedies  of  Terence  all  begin  with  "dissociated" 
prologues.  These  give  the  name  and  Greek  authorship  of  the 
Latin  play  and  bespeak  the  friendly  consideration  of  the  audience. 
They  devote  no  attention,  however,  to  the  dramatic  situation 
in  the  comedy  or  to  future  comphcations  therein,  but  are 
employed  for  polemical  purposes  against  the  poet's  detractors. 
It  used  to  be  supposed  that  this  was  an  absolutely  new  departure 
on  Terence's  part,  but  it  is  now  found  to  be  only  the  last  in  a 
series  of  developments  which  began  in  Greek  comedy/ 

Of  course  monologues  were  not  the  invention  of  the  play- 
wrights, being  found  as  early  as  Homer.  Yet  true  soliloquies,  as 
seen  in  Shakespeare,  are  a  late  development  in  Greek  drama. 
The  epic  hero,  when  alone,  may  appeal  to  some  divinity  or  the 
elements,  or  he  may  address  his  own  soul;  he  never  simply  thinks 
his  thoughts  out  loud.  So  long  as  the  tragedies  began  with  a 
parodus  the  choreutae  would  nearly  always  be  present;  and  a 
character  who  was  otherwise  alone  could  address  his  remarks  to 
them.     Consequently  no  monologues  occur  in  either  the  Suppli- 

*  Cf.  Reitzenstein,  Hermes,  XXXV  (1900),  622  ff. 


THEATRICAL  MACHINERY  AND  CONVENTIONS  305 

ants  or  the  Persians  of  Aeschylus.  But  with  the  introduction 
of  a  prologue  the  way  was  opened  up.  It  would  be  interesting 
to  know  how  the  words  of  the  eunuch  at  the  beginning  of  Phryni- 
chus'  Phoenician  Women  were  motivated,  but  no  evidence  is 
available.  In  the  extant  plays  of  Aeschylus  only  three  soHloquies 
are  found — in  the  Pro7netheus  Bound  (vss.  88  ff.)>  Agamemnon 
(vss.  I  ff.),  and  Eumenides  (vss.  i  if.).  The  first  is  addressed 
to  the  elements  (ether,  breezes,  rivers,  ocean,  earth,  and  sun)  and 
the  other  two  begin  with  prayer.  There  are  also  some  other 
speeches  which  are  deHvered  in  the  presence  of  the  chorus  or  of 
another  character  but  with  little  or  no  reference  thereto.  If 
completely  detached,  however,  they  are  addressed  to  divinities 
as  before.  It  must  be  added  that  though  monologues  in  Aeschy- 
lus and  other  tragedians  may  be  thus  motivated  at  the  beginning^ 
they  frequently  trail  off  into  expressions  which  are  not  strictly 
appropriate.  It  is  noticeable,  then,  that  of  the  two  types,  of 
motivation  found  in  Homer  only  the  first  occurs  in  Aeschylus. 
In  Sophocles  the  situation  is  practically  the  same. 

But  already  in  the  oldest  of  Euripides'  extant  tragedies,  the 
Alcestis,  a  development  may  be  detected.  Apollo's  monologue 
at  the  beginning  of  this  play  has  just  been  discussed.  It  is 
apparent  that  when  a  divinity  utters  a  soliloquy  he  would  rarely 
address  his  words  to  some  absent  deity  or  to  the  elements,  as 
mortal  personages  did  in  Aeschylus  and  Sophocles.  This  factor 
helps  to  account  for  the  fact  that  dramatic  illusion  suffers  here. 
For  all  practical  purposes  Apollo  might  Just  as  well  have  frankly 
addressed  himself  to  the  spectators,  as  the  comic  poets  some- 
times allowed  their  characters  to  do.  Such  prologizing  deities 
are  careful  to  explain  the  reason  for  their  presence  in  the  place 
where  we  find  them ;  but  they  are  absolved  from  the  necessity  of 
accounting  for  their  soliloquizing.  Their  speeches  sometimes 
degenerate  into  business-like  notices  which  are  almost  brusque 
in  their  abruptness.  For  example,  Posidon  begins  Euripides* 
Trojan  Women: 

I  come,  Posidon  I,  from  briny  depths 

Of  the  Aegean  Sea,  where  Nereids  dance,  etc. 

[Way's  translation! 


3o6  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

This  new  freedom,  which  thus  came  first  to  divine  prologists, 
was  soon  extended  also  to  mortals.  Thus  the  heroine  in  Eurip- 
ides' Andromache  exclaims  (vss.  i  ff.) : 

O  town  of  Thebes,  beauty  of  Asian  land, 

Whence,  decked  with  gold  of  costly  bride-array, 

To  Priam's  royal  hearth  long  since  I  came,  .... 

Here  on  the  marshes  'twixt  Pharsalia's  town 

And  Phthia's  plains  I  dweU.  [Way's  translation] 

The  artificiality  of  Euripides'  opening  soliloquies  strikingly 
appears  in  his  Orestes.  Referring  to  Clytemnestra's  murder  of 
her  husband,  Electra  says  (vss.  26  f.) : 

Wherefore  she  slew,— a  shame  for  maid  to  speak! — 

I  leave  untold,  for  whoso  will  to  guess.  [Way's  translation] 

These  words,  together  with  certain  other  phrases,  show  clearly 
that  the  speaker  is  conscious  of  an  audience. 

It  will  be  worth  our  while  to  note  and  comment  also  upon  the 
other  monologues  in  the  Alcestis  and  the  first  one  in  the  Medea j 
these  being  the  oldest  of  Euripides'  extant  tragedies.  At  vss. 
243  ff.  the  dying  Alcestis,  in  the  presence  of  her  husband  and 
the  chorus  and  interrupted  by  the  former  at  regular  intervals, 
bids  a  final  farewell  to  sun,  earth,  palace,  etc.  This  belongs  to 
the  type  found  in  Homer  and  Aeschylus  and  is  paralleled  by 
Sophocles'  Antigone  (vss.  806  £f.)  and  Ajax  (vss.  3722.).  At 
vs.  746  of  the  Alcestis  occurs  one  of  the  few  instances  of  a  chorus 
retiring  during  the  course  of  a  Greek  play.  Advantage  is  at 
once  taken  of  this  circumstance.  A  reason  for  the  servant's 
leaving  the  palace  at  this  point  can  readily  be  imagined  but  none 
is  expressly  mentioned.  Nor  is  the  bluntness  of  his  monologue 
softened  by  any  motivation.  At  vs.  773  Heracles  appears  and  a 
dialogue  ensues  between  them.  At  vs.  837  the  servant  with- 
draws ;  Heracles  tarries  and  bursts  forth  as  follows  (incidentally 
obviating  in  this  way  the  necessity  of  their  departures  in  opposite 
directions  exactly  synchronizing) : 

O  much-enduring  heart  and  hand  of  mine,  etc. 

It  will  be  observed  that  such  an  introduction  for  the  following 
soHloquy  is  a  reversion  to  the  second  Homeric  type,  which  now 


THEATRICAL  MACHINERY  AND  CONVENTIONS  307 

makes  its  first  appearance  in  tragedy.  At  vs.  861  Admetus 
re-enters  with  the  chorus  and  apostrophizes  his  bereaved  palace. 
His  speech  at  vs.  934  begins  with  the  words  "my  friends," 
referring  to  the  chorus,  and  closes  in  the  same  way  at  vs.  961. 
Except  for  these  artificial  sutures  his  words  constitute  in  effect  a 
soliloquy.  This  play  is  especially  valuable  for  our  present 
purpose  as  indicating  what  a  hindrance  the  chorus  was  to  the 
unhampered  use  of  monologues  outside  of  the  prologue,  and  how 
quickly  and  freely  they  were  called  into  requisition  during  its 
withdrawal.  The  same  deduction  may  be  drawn  also  from 
comedy.  In  the  Old  Comedy  of  Aristophanes,  the  chorus  still 
being  active  and  vigorous,  soliloquies  were  employed  hardly 
more  freely  than  in  Aeschylus  or  Sophocles.  But  by  the  time 
of  New  Comedy,  when  the  chorus  had  so  far  lost  its  functions 
as  to  appear  only  for  entr'actes  and  when  Euripides'  iimova- 
tions  had  had  time  to  work  their  full  effect,  monologues  occur 
with  great  frequency  and  are  usually  unmotived.  In  fact. 
Professor  Leo  endeavored  to  use  them  in  the  plays  of  Plautus 
and  Terence,  which  are  taken  from  originals  of  the  Greek 
New  Comedy,  as  a  criterion  to  determine  the  position  of  act 
divisions. 

From  the  Medea  I  wish  to  cite  only  the  opening  monologue, 
which  is  spoken  by  the  Colchian's  nurse: 

Would  God  that  Argo's  hidl  had  never  flown 
Through  those  blue  Clashing  Rocks  to  Colchis-land, 

....  My  mistress  then, 
Medea,  ne'er  had  sailed  to  lolcos'  towers 
With  love  for  Jason  thrilled  through  all  her  soul. 

[Way's  translation] 

An  admirable  quahty  here  is  the  passionate  emotion  which  does 
not  always  dominate  Greek  soliloquies.  A  little  later  (vs.  49)  a 
man  slave  enters  and  inquires : 

O  ancient  chattel  of  my  mistress'  home, 

Why  at  the  gates  thus  lonely  standest  thou, 

Thyself  unto  thyself  discoursing  ills  ? 

How  wills  Medea  to  be  left  of  thee  ?     [Way's  translation] 


3o8  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

She  replies: 

....  For  I  have  sunk  to  such  a  depth  of  grief, 
That  yearning  took  me  hitherward  to  come 
And  tell  to  earth  and  heaven  my  lady's  plight. 

[Way's  translation] 

It  is  noteworthy,  however,  that  despite  this  statement  her  open- 
ing monologue  had  not  in  fact  been  addressed  to  earth  or  sky. 
Since  Ibsen  the  soliloquy  has  been  tabooed  on  the  modern  stage. 
Yet  inasmuch  as  people  do  at  times  talk  aloud,  when  alone,  it 
would  seem  that  the  present-day  reaction  had  gone  too  far  and 
that  monologues,  under  proper  psychological  conditions,  might 
sometimes  be  allowed.  Furthermore  it  must  be  supposed  that 
among  impulsive  southern  races,  like  the  Greeks  and  Romans, 
soliloquizing  would  be  more  common  than  with  us,  and  in  con- 
sequence it  would  naturally  claim  a  larger  part  in  their  drama. 
Nevertheless,  we  have  seen  that,  until  Euripides,  the  playwrights 
restricted  its  use  to  such  instances  as  could  be  motivated  with 
some  degree  of  naturalness.  Of  these  motives  it  must  be  allowed 
that  the  least  satisfactory  was  that  founded  on  an  appeal  to  the 
elements.  Of  course  most  commentators  have  refused  to  recog- 
nize this  as  a  mere  expository  convention  and  have  expatiated 
upon  the  innate  feeling  for  and  sympathy  with  nature  among  the 
Greeks,  But  as  for  myself  I  fear  that  this  explanation  has  been 
pressed  unduly,  Euripides,  I  am  sure,  felt  self-conscious  in 
utilizing  a  device  so  threadbare  and  patent.  My  conviction  is 
based  on  the  retroactive  way  in  which  he  employed  the  motive 
here  in  the  Medea,  on  the  fact  that  he  often  preferred  to  introduce 
monologues  without  any  motive  than  to  resort  to  one  so  bald 
and  artificial  as  this,  and  especially  on  the  guilty  phrase  which  he 
slips  into  the  heroine's  soliloquy  in  his  Iphigenia  among  the 
Taurians  (vss.  42  f .) : 

What  visions  strange  the  night  hath  brought  to  me 
I'll  teU  to  ether,  if  doing  so  brings  help. 

Though  it  is  unsafe  to  set  too  much  value  upon  the  jibes  of  the 
comic  poets,  yet  it  is  not  without  interest  to  observe  their  attitude 


THEATRICAL  MACHINERY  AND  CONVENTIONS  309 

in  this  matter.     Philemon  placed  a  close  parody  of  this  Medea 

passage  in  the  mouth  of  a  boastful  cook  •} 

For  yearning  took  me  hitherward  to  come 
And  tell  to  earth  and  heaven — my  cuisinerie! 

And  Plautus  in  his  Merchant  (vss.  3  ff.)  preserved  a  more  explicit 
passage  from  the  same  poet  of  New  Comedy : 

I  do  not  do  as  I've  seen  others  do 

In  comedies,  who  through  the  power  of  love 

Tell  night,  day,  sun,  or  moon  their  miseries. 

The  foregoing  statement  of  Euripidean  usage  is  far  from 
exhaustive.  Yet  it  is  necessary  to  hasten  on.  Quite  apart 
from  the  effects  which  may  be  secured  from  monologues  in 
choral  drama,  there  are  no  less  than  three  additional  uses  to 
which  they  can  easily  be  put  in  chorusless  plays.  In  terms  of 
classical  drama,  therefore,  they  will  appear  most  frequently  in 
Greek  New  Comedy  and  in  Plautus  and  Terence. 

In  the  first  place  when  two  characters  meet  on  the  stage  and 
talk  it  is  necessary  for  them  either  to  appear  simultaneously  at 
the  two  entrances  (and  it  is  self-evident  that  this  method  cannot 
be  employed  very  often  without  seeming  ridiculous)  or  for 
one  of  them  to  enter  first  and  fill  up  a  slight  interval  before  the 
other's  arrival  by  soliloquizing.  Such  an  entrance  monologue 
occurs  at  the  beginning  of  Aristophanes'  Lysistrata,  where  the 
bearer  of  the  title-role  complains : 

Now  were  they  summoned  to  some  shrine  of  Bacchus, 

Pan,  Colias,  or  Genetyllis,  there  had  been 

No  room  to  stir,  so  thick  the  crowd  of  timbrels. 

And  now! — there's  not  one  woman  to  be  seen. 

Stay,  here  comes  one,  my  neighbor  Calonice. 

Good  morning,  friend.  [Rogers'  translation] 

Perhaps  I  may  be  pardoned  for  digressing  here  a  moment  in 
order  to  discuss  what  happens  when  two  characters  make  a 
simultaneous  introit  through  the  same  entrance.  In  most  cases 
it  is  natural  to  suppose  that  they  have  been  together  for  some 
little  while  and  that  some  talk  has  already  been  carried  on 

'Cf.  Kock,  Fragmenta  Comicorum  AUicorum,  II,  500,  fr.  79. 


3IO  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

between  them.  On  the  contrary  in  the  fifth-century  plays  the 
conversation  regularly  does  not  begin  until  after  they  have 
entered  the  stage.  Two  instances  of  this  have  already  been  noted 
on  pages  259  f.,  above,  Orestes  coming  all  the  way  from  Phocis 
to  Argos  before  he  acquaints  his  associates  with  the  Delphian 
oracle  or  formulates  a  plan  of  action  with  them,  and  Iris  accom- 
panying Madness  from  Olympus  but  reserving  her  instructions 
until  Thebes  has  been  reached.  Of  course  it  is  easy  to  see  why 
this  convention  was  employed,  but  a  little  thinking  enabled  the 
playwrights  to  secure  the  same  results  without  violating  veri- 
similitude quite  so  patently.  Only  twice  in  fifth-century  drama 
do  characters  enter  with  words  which  indicate  that  they  have 
already  been  engaged  in  conversation.  In  Aristophanes'  Frogs 
(405  B.C.)  (vs.  830),  Euripides  says  to  Dionysus,  as  they  emerge 
with  Pluto  from  the  latter's  palace:  "I  would  not  yield  the 
throne  of  tragedy  to  Aeschylus;  do  not  urge  me  to."  Again  in 
Euripides'  posthumous  Iphigenia  at  Aulis  (vss.  303  ff.),  Agamem- 
non's slave  enters  in  expostulation:    "Menelaus,  outrageous  is 

your  boldness You  ought  not  to  have  unsealed  the  tablet 

which  I  bore."  The  former  of  these  quotations  clearly  implies 
words  off  scene,  and  the  latter  implies  action  and  presumably 
words  as  well.  But  in  New  Comedy  and  the  Latin  comedies 
this  technique  has,  not  unnaturally,  pre-empted  the  field.  Two 
instances  must  suffice.  In  Terence's  version  of  Menander's 
Andrian  Girl  (vss.  820  f.),  Chremes  enters  complaining:  "My 
friendship  for  you,  Simo,  has  already  been  put  sufficiently  to  the 
test;  I  have  run  enough  risk.  Now  make  an  end  of  coaxing 
me."  Again,  in  Terence's  Brothers  (vs.  517),  Ctesipho  and  Syrus 
enter  together,  the  former  saying:  "You  say  my  father  has  gone 
to  the  country  ?"  It  is  characteristic  of  this  technique  that  the 
J  very  first  words  make  plain  the  fact  that  the  stage  conversation 
is  a  continuation  of  one  already  begun  off  stage  and  likewise 
disclose  the  topic  under  discussion.  It  will  be  remembered  that 
simultaneous  entrances  of  this  sort,  when  made  from  the  abode 
of  one  of  the  characters  involved,  are  generally  left  unmotivated 
(see  p.  239,  above). 


THEATRICAL  MACHINERY  AND  CONVENTIONS  311 

After  this  digression  we  may  return  to  the  second  use  which 
New  Comedy  made  of  monologues,  viz.,  as  exit  speeches.  Since 
there  was  no  drop  curtain  in  the  Greek  theater,  all  characters 
had  to  go  off  as  well  as  come  on ;  no  tableau  effects  to  terminate 
a  scene  were  possible.  Moreover,  in  order  to  avoid  the  simul- 
taneous exit  of  all  the  persons  in  a  scene,  it  often  seemed  best 
to  detain  one  of  them  beyond  the  rest  and  allow  him  to  fill  a 
brief  interval  with  a  soliloquy.  As  already  mentioned  this 
technique  occurs  so  frequently  in  Plautus  and  Terence  that  an 
attempt  has  been  made  to  utilize  it  as  a  criterion  for  a  division 
of  the  Roman  comedies  into  acts.  Such  an  exit  soliloquy  has 
already  been  noted  in  Euripides'  Alcestis,  vss.  837  ff.  (p.  306, 
above). 
y  In  the  third  place,  unless  a  new  character  is  to  enter  the  stage 
^  at  the  very  instant  that  an  old  one  leaves  it,  the  actor  who  engages 
in  successive  dialogue  with  each  of  them  must  cause  a  shght 
pause  by  soliloquizing.  Such  a  soliloquy  is  technically  known 
as  a  "link."  One  is  found  in  the  monologue  which  Strepsiades 
utters  between  the  withdrawal  of  his  son  and  the  entrance  of 
Socrates'  pupil  (Aristophanes'  Clouds,  vss.  126  ff.).  Links  are 
often  extremely  short,  sometimes  being  no  more  than  a  cough  or 
hem;  they  are  frequently  employed  to  cover  the  condensa- 
tion of  time,  especially  when  they  occur  between  the  exit 
and  re-entrance  of  the  same  character.  Furthermore,  they 
occur  in  playwrights  who  reject  other  forms  of  soliloquy,  no 
less  than  five  instances  appearing  in  Ibsen's  Pillars  of  Society 
alone. 

So  long  as  the  chorus  retained  its  vigor,  dramatists  found  it 
easier,  except  in  the  prologue  or  during  occasional  withdrawals 
of  the  chorus  in  the  course  of  the  action,  to  fill  gaps  by  remarks 
addressed  to  the  coryphaeus  than  by  entrance  soliloquies,  exit 
soliloquies,  or  links.  Yet  they  do  occur  in  choral  drama,  and 
I  have  cited  one  instance  illustrative  of  each  type  from  fifth- 
century  plays.  In  comedies  of  subsequent  date,  in  which  the 
chorus  was  greatly  curtailed  or  nonexistent,  they  may  be  found 
by  the  score. 


312 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  IS  DRAMA 


It  still  remains  to  speak  of  another  kind  of  soliloquy,  viz.,  the 
aside  or,  more  accurately  speaking,  the  apart,  by  which  the  grim 
ghastHness  of  modern  tragedy  has  often  been  enhanced.  The 
vastness  of  Greek  theaters  and  the  almost  constant  presence 
of  from  twelve  to  twenty-four  choreutae  rendered  this  artifice 
an  awkward  one  for  ancient  playwrights.  Nevertheless,  asides 
are  occasionally  found  in  Greek  drama.  In  Euripides'  Hippoly- 
tus  (vss.  1060  ff.),  that  hero,  unable  to  clear  himself  of  false 
accusations  except  by  violating  his  oath  of  secrecy,  exclaims  to 
himself : 

O  Gods,  why  can  I  not  unlock  my  lips, 
Who  am  destroyed  by  you  whom  I  revere  ? 
No! — whom  I  need  persuade,  I  should  not  so, 
And  all  for  nought  should  break  the  oaths  I  swore. 

[Way's  translation], 

entirely  unheard  by  his  father  and  the  chorus  close  at  hand. 
Half-asides  occur  in  Euripides'  Hecahe  (vss.  736-51),  where  the 
Trojan  queen  utters  no  less  than  four  aparts,  an  aggregate  of  ten 
verses,  in  an  effort  to  decide  whether  to  appeal  to  Agamemnon 
for  aid.  His  interruptions  indicate  that  he  is  aware  that  she  is 
speaking  but  does  not  catch  the  drift  of  her  words.  It  should 
be  noted,  however,  that  these  passages  do  not  contain  the  ironic 
values  which  have  usually  inhered  in  the  use  of  aparts  upon  the 
modern  stage.  The  obstacles  hampering  the  employment  of 
asides  in  fifth-century  times  appear  most  plainly  from  scenes  like 
Euripides'  Ion  (vss.  1520  fif.),  where  two  actors  wish  to  speak 
to  one  another  privately.  Their  confidences  must  be  uttered 
loud  enough  to  be  heard  by  the  seventeen  thousand  spectators, 
but  the  nearby  chorus  catches  not  a  word.  With  the  virtual 
disappearance  of  the  chorus  in  New  Comedy  the  apart,  not 
unnaturally,  came  into  more  frequent  use  and  was  employed 
more  as  it  has  been  in  modern  times. 

For  the  absence  of  ironic  aparts,  however,  Greek  tragedy  was 
richly  compensated  by  the  frequent  occurrence  of  dramatic  irony. 
Irony  of  course  is  a  mode  of  speech  by  means  of  which  is  conveyed 
a  meaning  contrary  to  the  literal  sense  of  the  words,  and  may 


THEATRICAL  MACHINERY  AND  CONVENTIONS  313 

be  divided  into  two  classes — "verbal"  and  "practical"  (to  use 
Bishop  Thirlwall's  term)  or  "dramatic."  In  the  former  the 
dissimulation  is  manifest  to  all  concerned,  else  the  sarcasm, 
passing  unrecognized,  would  fail  of  its  effect  and  recoil  upon  the 
speaker,  while  in  the  latter  (which  alone  interests  us  here) 
concealment  of  the  hinted  truth  is  essential.  It  may  be  the 
speaker  himself  who  fails  to  perceive  the  inner  meaning  of  his  own 
words  (and  then  we  call  it  "objective"  irony),  or  he  may  employ 
"subjective"  irony,  i.e.,  consciously  use  his  superior  knowledge, 
to  gloat  over  his  victim  or  inveigle  him  to  doom  by  an  ambiguous 
utterance.  In  either  case,  however,  the  double  entente  is  usually 
known  to  the  audience,  a  considerable  part  of  whose  pleasure 
consists  in  viewing  with  prophetic  insight  the  abortive  efforts 
of  the  dramatic  characters  to  escape  the  impending  catastrophe. 
An  excellent  instance  of  conscious  irony  occurs  in  Middleton 
and  Rowley's  Changeling,  Act  III,  scene  2.  There  De  Flores  is 
guiding  Alonzo  about  the  castle  where  he  intends  to  murder  him, 
and  significantly  says: 

All  this  is  nothing;   you  shall  see  anon 
A  place  you  little  dream  on. 

The  unconscious  irony,  however,  is  likely  to  be  more  tragic  in  its 
tone.  So  when  lago  first  conceives  his  groundless  suspicions  of 
his  wife  and  Othello  he  vows  that  he  will  be 

evened  with  him,  wife  for  wife.     {Othello,  Act  II,  scene  2], 

and  these  words  are  fulfilled  in  a  sense  far  different  than  he 
intended,  by  the  death  of  both  wives.  For  this  sort  of  irony 
Sophocles  was  especially  renowned,  and  his  Oedipus  the  King 
abounds  in  instances.  One  must  suffice.  Oedipus  has  slain 
his  own  father,  the  reigning  king,  though  these  facts  are  unknown 
to  him.  Being  now  directed  by  an  oracle  to  investigate  his 
predecessor's  death,  he  declares,  with  more  meaning  than  he 
realized:  "I  will  fight  this  battle  for  him  as  for  mine  own  sire" 
(vss.  264). 

It  is  possible  to  draw  still  one  more  distinction.     Dramatic 
irony  consists,   not  only  in  the  contrast  between  the  outer, 


314  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

apparent  meaning  and  the  real,  inner  meaning  of  an  ambiguous 
phrase,  but  also  in  the  contrast  between  the  real  and  the  supposed 
situation.  Thus  a  man  whose  ruin  is  impending  often  mistakes 
the  position  of  his  affairs  so  utterly  as  to  indulge  in  entirely- 
unjustified  expressions,  feelings,  gestures,  or  acts  of  rejoicing 
and  triumph.  The  difference  between  these  two  varieties  of 
dramatic  irony  may  be  seen  in  Sophocles'  Maidens  of  Trachis. 
In  the  first  place  we  have  the  contradiction  between  the  real 
meaning  of  the  oracle  that  Heracles'  "release  from  toils  will  be 
accomplished"  and  Heracles'  own  mistaken  interpretation 
thereof  (vss.  167  f.  and  iiyoff.);  and  in  the  second  place  there 
is  the  "irony  of  situation"  in  that  Deianira  sends  him  a  gift 
which  she  hopes  will  woo  back  his  love  but  which  actually 
results  in  his  death.  Euripides'  Bacchanals  offers  other  examples 
in  the  boastful  and  confident  attitude  of  Pentheus,  whom  the 
spectators  know  to  be  doomed  to  a  frightful  end,  and  in  the 
mock  humiUty  of  Dionysus,  whose  intended  vengeance  they 
foresee.  Again,  in  Sophocles'  Oedipus  the  King  (vss.  ioi4ff.) 
there  is  a  striking  contrast  between  the  intended  and  the  actual 
effect  when  the  Corinthian  messenger  informs  Oedipus  that 
Polybus  was  not  his  father.  This  irony  of  situation  often  consists 
in  the  clash  or  shock  of  conflicting  intrigues,  as  may  be  seen  in 
Shakespeare's  Measure  for  Measure. 

But  dramatic  irony  was  not  confined  to  tragedy,  as  a  brief 
analysis  of  one  of  Terence's  plays  will  disclose.  In  comedy, 
however,  the  effect  was  naturally  somewhat  different,  being  more 
humorous  than  tragic.  In  the  Andrian  Girl,  Simo  intrigues  to 
test  his  son's  obedience,  pretending  that  he  has  arranged  an 
immediate  marriage  for  him  with  Chremes'  daughter.  Accord- 
ingly there  is  irony  of  situation  in  the  consternation  which  this 
false  armouncement  causes  (vss.  236  ff.  and  301  ff.).  Pamphilus' 
slave  (Davus),  however,  soon  sees  through  the  trick  and  per- 
suades him  to  turn  back  the  intrigue  (and,  consequently,  the 
irony)  upon  his  father  by  apparent  compliance  (vss.  420  ff.). 
But  Simo  at  once  proceeds  to  get  Chremes'  consent  in  fact,  so 
that  the  dramatic  situation  is  again  reversed,  as  the  too  clever 


THEATRICAL  MACHINERY  AND  CONVENTIONS  31$ 

slave  discovers  to  his  surprise  when  he  facetiously  inquires  why 
the  wedding  is  being  delayed  (vss.  581  fif.)-  Especially  galling 
are  Simo's  words  (said  without  a  full  comprehension  of  how  true 
they  are):  "Now  I  beseech  you,  Davus,  since  you  alone  have 
brought  about  this  marriage  ....  exert  yourself  further  that 
my  son  be  brought  into  line  "  (vss.  595  f .).  There  is  also  irony  in 
the  conduct  of  Charinus,  who  is  a  suitor  for  Chremes'  daughter 
and  is  naturally  (though  needlessly)  disturbed  at  the  thought  of 
Pamphilus'  marrying  her  (vss.  301  £f.,  625  £f.,  and  957  ff.).  Of 
course  there  is  always  irony  involved  when  a  man  leads  himself 
astray  or  allows  another  so  to  lead  him;  but  as  these  are  the 
standard  themes  of  comedy,  one  need  not  cite  every  such 
instance. 

The  best  instance  in  this  play,  however,  can  be  appreciated 
only  on  second  reading  or  as  the  memory  of  the  spectator  recalls 
its  real  significance.  Simo  wishes  his  son  to  marry  Chremes' 
daughter,  but  Pamphilus'  affections  are  already  pledged  else- 
where. Now  unknown  to  all  the  parties  concerned  this  sweet- 
heart is  also  Chremes'  daughter.  There  is,  therefore,  more 
meaning  than  he  intends  or  perceives  in  Pamphilus'  despairing 
question:  " Can  I  in  no  way  avoid  relationship  with  Chremes  ? " 
(vs.  247). 

This  is  similar  to  Admetus'  words  in  Euripides'  Alcestis 
(vs.  1 102)  when  Heracles  insists  that  he  receive  into  his  home  a 
veiled  woman  (really  Admetus'  own  wife  restored  to  life) : 
"Would  you  had  never  won  her  in  a  wrestling  bout!"  But  in 
the  present  instance  the  identity  of  Pamphilus'  mistress  does 
not  transpire  until  later,  so  that,  as  I  have  stated,  the  irony  is 
not  at  first  apparent.  There  is  here  a  point  of  difference  between 
tragedy  and  comedy  in  antiquity:  the  themes  of  tragedy  were 
almost  invariably  drawn  from  mythology  and  the  outlines  of  the 
story  would  therefore  be  known  to  practically  everyone  of 
consequence  in  the  audience;  furthermore,  the  not  infrequent 
practice  of  foretelling  the  denouement  in  the  prologue  would  put 
even  the  ignorant  in  a  position  to  recognize  subtleties  in  the 
language   of   the   characters.     That   the   ancient   playwrights 


3l6  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

themselves  appreciated  this  difference  appears  from  the  words 
of  the  comic  poet,  Antiphanes,  aheady  quoted  on  page  127, 
above.  As  a  result,  in  ancient  tragedy  the  irony  of  a  situation 
or  ambiguous  phrase  would  be  recognized  at  once  without  any 
preparation  for  it  whatsoever,  while  in  ancient  comedy  and  in 
modern  plays,  whether  tragic  or  comic,  these  effects  usually  have 
to  be  led  up  to.  Two  other  considerations  ought  also  to  be 
mentioned,  however.  First,  audiences  exercise  a  sort  of  clair- 
voyance in  looking  beneath  the  bare  words  and  divining  the 
course  of  events,  so  that  (paradoxical  as  it  sounds)  the  surprises 
of  the  stage  usually  are  long  foreseen  by  the  spectators  and  only 
the  expected  events  happen.  Secondly,  the  denouement  here 
in  question,  the  discovery  that  Pamphilus'  sweetheart  is  the 
daughter  of  free  parents  and,  in  particular,  of  someone  among  the 
dramatis  personae,  was  so  hackneyed  in  New  Comedy,  occurring 
in  no  less  than  five  of  Terence's  six  plays,  that  any  frequent 
theatergoer  would  have  been  on  the  lookout  for  it  and  might 
easily  have  recognized  any  subtle  effects  dependent  thereon. 

In  conclusion,  we  have  to  consider  the  dramatic  purpose  of 
tragic  irony  and  its  effect  upon  the  audience.  Bishop  Thirlwall 
{op.  ciL,  p.  489)  pointed  out: 

There  is  always  a  slight  cast  of  irony  in  the  grave,  calm,  respectful 
attention  impartially  bestowed  by  an  intelligent  judge  on  two  contending 
parties,  who  are  pleading  their  causes  before  him  with  all  the  earnestness 
of  deep  conviction,  and  of  excited  feeling.  What  makes  the  contrast 
interesting  is,  that  the  right  and  the  truth  lie  on  neither  side  exclusively: 
that  there  is  no  fraudulent  purpose,  no  gross  imbecility  of  intellect,  on  either: 
but  both  have  plausible  claims  and  specious  reasons  to  allege,  though  each 
is  too  much  blinded  by  prejudice  or  passion  to  do  justice  to  the  views  of  his 
adversary.  For  here  the  irony  lies  not  in  the  demeanor  of  the  judge,  but  is 
deeply  seated  in  the  case  itself,  which  seems  to  favor  both  of  the  litigants, 
but  really  eludes  them  both. 

This  analogy  is  especially  true  when  the  irony  arises  from 
clashing  intrigues,  and  the  audience,  admitted  to  the  author's 
confidence  and  sitting  at  his  side,  as  it  were,  joins  with  him  in 
awarding  praise  here  and  condemnation  there.  Again  the  play- 
wright is  the  omnipotent  creator  and  ruler  of  the  little  world 


THEATRICAL  MACHINERY  AND  CONVENTIONS  317 

that  moves  upon  the  stage.  And  the  spectator,  beholding  the 
dramatic  characters'  fruitless  toil  and  plotting,  baseless  exulta- 
tion, and  needless  despondency  seems  to  be  admitted  behind  the 
scenes  of  this  world's  tragedy  and  to  view  the  spectacle  through 
the  great  dramatist's  eyes,  learning  that  man  must  be  content 
with  little,  humble  ever,  distrustful  of  fortune,  and  fearful  of  the 
powers  above.  Thus  the  slighter  themes  and  less  important 
reverses  of  comedy  bring  a  purification  (Kadapais)  in  their  train 
no  less  truly  than  the  more  somber  catastrophes  of  tragedy.^ 

'  Aristotle's  theory  of  the  purificatory  effects  of  tragedy  has  not  fallen  within 
the  scope  of  my  text,  but  I  cannot  forbear  citing  Fairchild,  "Aristotle's  Doctrine 
of  Katharsis  and  the  Positive  or  Constructive  Activity  Involved,"  Classical  Journal, 
XII  (1916),  44  ff.  Stuart,  "The  Function  and  the  Dramatic  Value  of  the  Recogni- 
tion Scene  in  Greek  Tragedy,"  American  Journal  of  Philology,  XXXIX  (191 8), 
268  ff.,  maintains  that  Aristotle's  terms  eXeos  and  <t>60os,  which  are  usually  trans- 
lated "pity  and  fear,"  must  be  interpreted  as  including  also  such  emotions  as 
"sympathy"  and  "suspense." 


Footprints  on  the  sands  of  time. — 
H.  W.  Longfellow. 


CHAPTER  DC 
THEATRICAL  RECORDS^ 

The  technical  word  used  of  bringing  out  a  play  was  SLdacrKeiu 
("to  teach"),  and  the  technical  name  for  the  director  of  the 
performance  was  didascalus  (StSacr/caXos)  or  "teacher."  We 
have  already  noted  (p.  198,  above)  that  didascalia  (StSaaKaXta; 
"teaching")  was  the  name  for  a  group  of  plays  brought  out  by  a 
tragic  playwright  at  one  time,  and  the  same  word  was  applied 
to  a  record  of  the  theatrical  contests.  At  the  beginning  the 
didascalus  and  the  author  were  identical,  for  the  reason  that  the 
primitive  poets  taught  the  choreutae  what  they  were  to  sing, 
that  the  poets  in  the  one-actor  period  carried  the  histrionic  parts 
themselves  and  still  taught  the  choreutae  their  roles,  and  that 
even  when  they  had  ceased  to  act  in  their  plays  they  yet 
continued  to  train  those  who  did. 

The  Athenian  archons  seem  to  have  kept  records  of  the 
contests  at  the  Dionysiac  festivals,  the  archon  eponymus  for 
the  City  Dionysia  and  the  king  archon  for  the  Lenaea.  These 
records,  of  course,  were  not  compiled  in  the  interests  of  literary 
research  such  as  flourished  in  Alexandrian  times  but  merely  for 
the  private  convenience  of  the  officials  and  for  documentary 
purposes.    Apparently  they  consisted  of  a  bald  series  of  entries, 

^  Cf.  Capps,  "Dramatic  Synchoregia  at  Athens,"  American  Journal  of  Philol- 
ogy, XVII  (1896)  319  fif.;  "Catalogues  of  Victors  at  the  Dionysia  and  Lenaea," 
ibid.,  XX  (1899),  388  ff.;  "The  Dating  of  Some  Didascalic  Inscriptions,"  American 
Journal  of  Archaeology,  IV  (1900),  74  ff.;  "The  Introduction  of  Comedy  into  the 
City  Dionysia,"  Decennial  Publications  of  the  University  of  Chicago,  VI  (1904), 
259  ff.;  and  " Epigraphical  Problems  in  the  History  of  Attic  Comedy,"  American 
Journal  of  Philology,  XXVIII  (1907),  179  ff.;  Wilhelm,  Urkunden  dramatischer 
Au^ffUhrungen  in  Athen  (1906),  and  "Eine  Inschrift  aus  Athen,"  Anzeiger  d. 
Akademie  d.  Wissenschaften  in  Wien,  phil.-hist.  Klasse,  XLIII  (1906),  77  ff.;  Clark, 
"A  Study  of  the  Chronology  of  Menander's  Life,"  Classical  Philology,  I  (1906), 
3135.;  Oxyrkynchus  Papyri,  IV  (1904),  69  ff.,  and  X  (1914),  81  ff.;  O'Connor, 
Chapters  in  the  History  of  Actors  and  Acting  in  Ancient  Greece  (1908);  Jachmann, 
De  Aristotelis  Didascaliis  (1909);  and  Flickinger,  "Certain  Numerals  in  the  Greek 
Dramatic  Hypotheses,"  Classical  Philology,  V  (1910),  i  ff. 

318 


THEATRICAL  RECORDS  319 

chronicling  the  choregi,  tribes,  poet-didascali,  actors,  plays,  and 
victors  in  the  various  dithyrambic  and  dramatic  events.  In 
the  fourth  century  B.C.  these  archives  were  published  by  Aris- 
totle in  a  work  entitled  Didascaliae.  His  service  probably  was 
mainly  that  of  unearthing  the  material  and  arranging  it  in 
chronological  sequence  and  of  making  it  available  to  a  wider 
public,  for  Dr.  Jachmann  has  made  it  seem  clear  that  he  did  not 
edit  the  archons'  record  to  any  great  extent.  In  consequence 
Aristotle's  book  contained  too  much  and  was  overloaded  with 
unimportant  details.  Its  main  value  consisted  in  being  a  court 
of  last  resort  and  a  source  from  which  smaller  and  less  unwieldy 
lists  might  be  compiled. 

Some  of  these  indirect  products  of  Aristotle's  industry  were 
entered  upon  stone  and  are  still  preserved  in  fragments.  The 
first  of  these  is  for  convenience  referred  to  as  the  Fasti  ("cal- 
endar" or  "register")  and  contained  the  annual  victors  in  each 
event  at  the  City  Dionysia  from  about  502/1  B.C.  when  volunteer 
comuses  were  first  given  a  place  in  the  festival  program.  This 
inscription  was  cut  upon  the  face  of  a  wall  built  of  four  rows  of 
superimposed  blocks  and  almost  six  feet  in  height.  The  text 
was  arranged  in  vertical  columns.  There  were  originally  sixteen 
of  these  and  most  of  them  contained  one  hundred  and  forty-one 
Hnes.  The  presence  of  a  heading  over  the  first  five  columns, 
however,  reduced  the  lines  upon  them  to  one  hundred  and  forty. 
For  the  most  part  the  lines  in  adjoining  columns  were  placed 
exactly  opposite  one  another,  but  toward  the  bottom  of  col.  13 
the  writing  was  crowded  so  that  this  column  perhaps  contained 
no  less  than  one  hundred  and  fifty-three  lines.  As  the  entries 
for  346-342  B.C.  fell  in  this  space,  most  authorities  accept 
Dr.  Wilhelm's  conclusion  that  the  body  of  the  inscription  was 
cut  at  that  period  and  received  additional  entries,  year  by  year, 
for  subsequent  festivals  until  about  319  b.c.^    Whoever  was 

'  Reisch,  however,  in  his  review  of  Wilhehn  in  Zeitschrift  f.  ostr.  Gymnasien, 
LVIII  (1907),  297  f.  maintained  that  the  original  cutting  went  to  the  bottom  of 
col.  14.  This  would  postpone  the  preparation  of  the  inscription  until  about  330  B.C. 
and  would  make  it  a  feature  of  the  completion  of  the  theater  by  Lycurgus  at  about 
that  time.    He  suggests  that  the  Fasti  stood  in  the  left  parodus  of  the  theater. 


320 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


responsible  for  the  original  inscription  must  have  excerpted  the 
appropriate  items  from  Aristotle's  Didascaliae  and,  for  the  brief 
period  intervening  between  the  publication  of  Aristotle's  book 
and  346-342  B.C.,  from  the  original  archives. 


IT  p  tl)  T\0  V  K    W 

[SJeTOKXeiSrjs  ixop'fl'ye 

\M.^a.yvqs  idldanKev 

Tpa7wi5wi' 

UepiKXTJs  Xo\ap:  ix'Op'^ 
!      Ai<TxvKos  ^[Sj/SaiTKe 
['ETri  XdprjTos  472/1] 

[ —  ira.l8uv] 

[6  deiva  ^xop'^V^O 

[ —  dvSpwj'] 
0     [6  deha  ^x]°[P'^^''] 

[ku/mwiSwv] 

[6  deiva  ix]opT^yei 

[ iSl8]a(7K€v 

[rpayioidCiv] 
s     [6  deiva  ix^op^yei 

HoXvcppda fiu^v  iSidaff 
['EttI  Ilpa^i.ipyo]v  471/0 

[ vtU  nalldiov 

[ ^Xo]P'77" 

•o     [ dvdp]u)v 

[ ^x]op'^y 

[KUfiUlBwv] 

[ fXO/"57«]' 

\kt\. 


fi  0  I      Tj  a  a  V      riS[i     Atoyi/ 
TiavSiov^s  dv5pCiv\ 
K\eaf»'6T[os  KnSa^rj:    ixop'qyei] 

Qap[ ixop'f)!^'-] 

\b  deiva  i5l8affKe] 
[rpayuiduv] 

[ ]:    ^Xopi} 

[ ]  idi8a(7Kev 

['Eirl  ^L\o]K\iovs  459/8 
[OijvTjts  TraiSijJv 
Ariii68oKos  ixopiriye 

'iTTTToduVTls   dvSpQv 

Eu/crijyuajv 'EXeu:    ix°P'^ 

Kb)flli)lSu>V 

'EvpvKXeiSrjs  ^x°P''57" 
Eu0p6vtos  i8i8a(rKe 
Tpay(i3i8G>v 

Seyo/cX^s   A<pi8va:  ix'^P'^ 
Aicrx^Xos  iSl8affKev 
'EttT  A^puvos  458/7 
Epex^'?'^  7rai5a>v 
Xaplas' Ay pv\i]:  ixop'^ 
AetovrU  dv8pCov 
AeivScrrpaTos  ix^Pivy^i-] 

K(i}/JL(j}lSQ)V 

[ ^x]op-ny[ei- 


a  w  I       — 

[6  Seiva  exop'^iyei] 
[6  8eiva  eOt'6ao"/ce] 
[vTTOKpiTTjs  6  Seiva] 
[  EttJ  Ti/Mapx^8ov  447/ 
[ — is  iraiScov] 
[6  8etva  ixopToyti] 
E[/)ex^'7^s  dvSpQv] 
B/to[j'  ^x<'P''77*'] 

/Cw[;U.Wl6u>J'] 

'A;'5[ —       ixoprjyei] 
Ka\[\ias  i8l8a<TKev] 
Tpa[yci}i8Qv^ 
GaX[ —       ixop^yei] 
Ka[pKlvos  iSiSaffKe] 
VTr[oKpiTT]i  6  Seiva] 
E7r[t  KaWifjidxov  446/ ^ 
[ktX.] 


Fig.  75. — ^Wilhelm's  Transcription  and  Restoration  of  Two  Fragments  of  the 
Athenian  Fasti. 

See  p.  320,  n.  i 

The  character  of  the  Fasti  will  appear  most  clearly  from 
Fig.  75,*  a  transcript  and  restoration  of  two  fragments  on  which 
were  originally  cut  the  tops  of  cols.  3-5.  The  Greek  letters 
within  brackets  are  restorations  where  the  stone  is  broken  away 
or  illegible.     Inasmuch  as  the  entries  follow  a  fixed  order  from 

'  Fig.  75  is  taken  from  Wilhehn,  Urkunden  dramatischer  Aufftihrungen  in 
Athen,  p.  18,  and  represents  fragments  a  and/  of  Corpus  Inscriptionum  Graecarum, 

n,  971. 


THEATRICAL  RECORDS  321 

year  to  year  and  occupy  a  definite  number  of  lines,  except  as 
slight  changes  were  occasionally  introduced  into  the  program,  it 
is  often  easy  to  restore  everything  but  proper  names.  Of  the 
heading  of  the  inscription,  which  extended  over  the  first  five 
columns,  only  the  center  is  preserved.  When  complete  it 
probably  read  somewhat  as  follows:  oibe  vevLKrjKacrtv  ....  d^' 
ov  irpcor]ov  koojjloi  ^aav  rco[t  ^lovwooi  'EXevdepel  ("The  following 
gained  the  victory  ....  since  first  there  were  comuses  in 
honor  of  Dionysus  Eleuthereus  ")  •  Let  us  examine  more  closely 
the  record  of  the  year  which  begins  at  line  nine  in  the  second 
column  of  Fig.  75  (col.  4  in  the  complete  inscription).  The 
entries  for  each  year  begin  with  eirl  ("in  the  time  of"),  followed 
by  the  name  of  the  Athenian  archon  eponymus  in  the  genitive 
case.  The  archon  for  this  year  was  Philocles,  whose  term  ran 
from  July,  459  B.C.,  to  July,  458  B.C.  Since  the  festivals  came 
in  the  spring  the  record  under  consideration  is  for  the  City 
Dionysia  of  458  B.C.  The  inscription  is  so  formulaic  and  con- 
densed that  it  has  necessarily  been  expanded  somewhat  in  the 
following  translation : 

In  the  archonship  of  Philocles. 

The  tribe  Oeneis  was  victorious  with 

a  dithyrambic  chorus  of  boys; 
Demodocus  was  choregus. 
The  tribe  Hippothontis  was  victorious 

with  a  dithyrambic  chorus  of  men; 
Euctemon  of  Eleusis  was  choregus. 
In  the  contest  of  comedians: 
EurycHdes  was  choregus, 
Euphronius  was  didascalus. 
In  the  contest  of  tragedians: 
Xenocles  of  Aphidnae  was  choregus, 
Aeschylus  was  didascalus. 

This  was  the  year  in  which  Aeschylus  competed  in  Athens  for 
the  last  time  and  was  victorious  with  his  Orestean  trilogy. 

About  278  B.C.  two  other  inscriptions  were  compiled  from 
Aristotle's  publication  of  theatrical  records.  I  refer  to  the 
stone  Didascaliae  and  to  the  Victors'-Lists.     The  former  gave 


322  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

the  full  program  of  the  dramatic,  but  not  the  dithyrambic, 
events  for  each  year  and  fell  into  four  divisions,  dealing  respec- 
tively with  tragedy  and  with  m?  ^  %;        '                i       / 
comedy  at  each  of  the  two               r j 

festivals.       Fig.    76a^    gives    a  [TraAaJat  Ne[o7rTdAe/tos] 

transcript  of  two  fragments  ['l</)i-ye]vetui  Eup[t7r]iSo[v] 

which  reproduce  the  programs  t'^"^]^  'Ao-rvSa/^as 

of    tragedy    at   the   City  ,     ['AxclAAcr  ^^re:  ©eTraXo'^ 

Dionysia  m  341  and  340  B.C.  ['Av^yov.?^  i^e:  'AVoScuLpos] 

They  may  be   freely  trans-  [Eujaperos  8[ev:]  Tempwi 

lated,  as  shown  on  p.  323.  [wrje:  'A6r]v68wpo<s 

There  are  several  matters  ['A;)(i]AX£t  v[Tre]:  ©cTTaAo's 

here  which  are  worthy  of  com-  "     j:;  •  •  ^Jt^^^^:  N]eo7rrdAe/xo5 

ment.    It  will  be  noted  that  L  ^"^^'^^J  '^P'-/ 

by  341   B.C.   the  tragic  poets  .,,          'Opearrjc  [irre:  ' AOrivoSo^pos] 

no  longer  closed  each  group  of  Avyiyi  iire:  0eTTa[Ads] 

plays  with  a  satyric  drama,         '* vtto:  NeoTrToAe/ios  cvtK[a] 

but  one  satyr-play  was  per-  '     '^'^^  NtKo/^axou  o-arvpi        341/0 

formed  instead  as  a  preface  _Tcp^K\^,  AvKor^pya>c 

,                 .  TraAaiat:   NeoTTToAe/xl  osj 

to  the  tragic  contest.    It  fol-  .p,  ^       t^  >      s 

O  -at                UpeCTTTjL  t^vpiTTLOO 

lowed  that  the  playwrights.  »  ^^r?:  'AarvSafms 

the  number  of  whose  dramas  Uapdevo-n-aLWL  iire:  ©cT[TaAos] 

now  corresponded  to  that  of  [AvKd]ovt  we:  Neo7rTdAe[/AosJ 

the  star  performers,  were  no  t;  •  '  "^"^"i^  ^f^'=  ^P'^'^' 

longer  handicapped  by  being  ,^     f^.^.j^^g^  .^^^  N.o.roA[e^os] 

allotted  the  exclusive  services  ~[Evdp]eTos  rpc 

of  a  single  star  and  his  troupe  ['AAK]/*6[a>v]i:  ^ttc:  0£Tra[Aos] 

but  were  placed  upon  terms  [•  .  •  A]7;t:  vire:  Neo7rTd[A£] 

of  perfect  equaHty  by  having  i^'^^'  ©[cT-TaAos  cvtm 

all  the  stars  in  turn  at  their  '"  rE7rl®eo]cl>pdcTTovaa[rvpL34o/39 

command,  each  for  a  different  r   \    -    'Jr  ^t^^'^p       1 

'  [TraAaiaf    IStKrJoo-TpLaTOSj 

tragedy.     This  explains  why  [ EvjptmTSovJ 

in  340  B.C.,  when  we  must  [ ]o  [•  •  • 

'  Fig.  76a  is  taken  from  Wilhelm,  ,  ^iG.  76a.-Wilhelm's  Transcription 

...                    J                 ^    ^     ..  and  Restoration  of  Two  Fragments  or 

op.  at.,  p.  40,  and  represents  Corpus  ^^^  g^^^^  Didascaliae  at  Athens. 

Inscnpttonum  Graecarum,  II,  973.  See  p.  322,  n.  i 


THEATRICAL  RECORDS  325 

suppose  that  three  players  of  the  first  rank  with  their  sup- 
porting companies   were   for   some   reason   not  available,  the 


In  the  archonship  of  Sosigenes  (342/1  B.C.).     Satyr-play: 

was  poet  with  his . 

Old  tragedy:  Neoptolemus 

acted  in  Euripides'  Iphigenia. 

Poets:  Astydamas  was  first 

with  the  Achilles  acted  by  Thettalus 

with  the  Athamas  acted  by  Neoptolemus 

with  the  Antigone  acted  by  Athenodorus; 

Evaretus  was  second  with  the  Teucer 

acted  by  Athenodorus 

with  the  Achilles  acted  by  Thettalus 

with  the acted  by  Neoptolemus; 

Aphareus  was  third  with  the  Daughters  of  Pelias 

acted  by  Neoptolemus 

with  the  Orestes  acted  by  Athenodorus 

with  the  Auge  acted  by  Thettalus; 

the  actor  Neoptolemus  was  victor. 
In  the  archonship  of  Nicomachus  (341/0  B.C.).     Satyr-play: 

Timocles  was  poet  with  his  Lycurgus. 

Old  tragedy:  Neoptolemus 

acted  in  Euripides'  Orestes. 

Poets:  Astydamas  was  first 

with  the  Parthenopaeus  acted  by  Thettalus 

with  the  Lycaon  acted  by  Neoptolemus; 

cles  was  second  with  the  Phrixus 

acted  by  Thettalus 

with  the  Oedipus  acted  by  Neoptolemus; 

Evaretus  was  third 

with  the  Alcmeon  acted  by  Thettalus 

with  the acted  by  Neoptolemus; 

the  actor  Thettalus  was  victor. 

Fig.  766. — Translation  of  Inscription  in  Fig.  76a 


number  of  tragedies  presented  by  each  playwright  was  likewise 
reduced  to  two  and  the  histrionic  talent  was  thus  kept  evenly 
distributed.  The  fact  that  the  tragic  writers  no  longer  devoted 
whole  trilogies  to  different  aspects  of  the  same  theme  made 
it  easy  to  reduce  the  number  of  tragedies  in  any  year  in 
order  to  conform  to  an  emergency  in  the  histrionic  conditions. 


324 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


Furthermore,  old  tragedies  were  not  now  permitted  to  compete 
with  new  ones,  as  was  said  to  have  been  the  practice  in  the  case  of 
Aeschylus'  plays  after  his  decease  (see  p.  203,  above) ;  but  begin 
ning  at  the  City  Dionysia  of  386  B.C.,  as  we  learn  from  the  Fasti, 
an  old  tragedy  was  performed,  outside  of  the  contest,  every  year 
It  is  interesting  to  observe  that  in  both  these  years  and  again  in 
339  B.C.  (see  next  to  the  last  line  in  Fig.  76a)  plays  of  Euripides 
were  chosen  for  this  purpose,  and  this  is  in  accord  with  the  steady 
growth  of  that  poet's  popularity  as  compared  with  Aeschylus 
and  Sophocles.  As  already  stated,  the  DidascaHae  were  inscribed 
in  278  B.C.,  but  the  record  was  kept  up  to  date  by  contempora- 
neous entries  for  over  a  century  subsequently. 

The  Victors'-Lists  were  prepared  at  the  same  time  as  the 
stone  Didascaliae  and  were  likewise  derived  from  Aristotle,^  but 
they  were  very  different  in  character.  They  recorded  the  aggre- 
gate of  victories  won  by  poets  and  actors  in  tragedy  and  comedy 
at  each  of  the  two  festivals — eight  lists  in  all.  I  shall  content 
myself  with  citing  one  fragment  from  the  Hst  of  tragic  poets 
who  were  victorious  at  the  City  Dionysia  (cf.  Fig.  77  a  and  b).' 
The  names  were  arranged  in  the  chronological  order  of  their 
first  victory  at  the  festival  in  question,  in  this  case  the  City 
Dionysia;  and  after  each  name  was  entered  the  total  number  of 
victories  gained  at  that  festival.  We  are  especially  interested 
in  two  names  in  this  list,  Aeschylus  and  Sophocles.  Of  course 
the  former's  name  did  not  originally  head  the  Hst;  it  stood  in  the 
eleventh  line.  The  numeral  is  broken  away  from  behind  his 
name,  but  we  know  from  other  sources  that  he  won  thirteen 
(AIII)  victories.  He  died  before  the  establishment  of  the 
tragic   contest  at  the  Lenaea,   so   that  his   competition   was 

'  Korte,  "Aristoteles'  NIKAI  AIONTSIAKAI,"  Classical  Philology,  I  (1906), 
391  ff.,  maintained  that  the  Victors'-Lists  were  transferred  to  stone  straight 
from  another  book  of  Aristotle's  entitled  N?Kai  Aiovucria/cal  'Ao-rt/cai  Kal  Arjval'Kal. 
("Victories  at  the  City  Dionysia  and  the  Lenaea").  Our  knowledge  of  the  nature 
of  this  work  is  confined  to  what  can  be  inferred  from  its  title  and  is  too  vague  to 
justify  dogmatic  conclusions. 

^  Figs.  77a  and  b  are  taken  from  Wilhelm,  op.  ciL,  loi,  and  represent  Corpus 
Inscriptionum  Graecarum,  II,  977a  and  ab  respectively. 


i"'iu.  77a. — A  Fragment  of  the  Athenian  Victors'-List 
See  p.  324,  n.  2 


[.....    .]a4-] 

||KapK(.'Jvos  A  1 

— 

['Ao-rJi^Sa/xas  n  II   [— 

-?] 

[Ai]o-;)(i;[Xo9  — ] 

[®eo]8€/<ras  P  1 1 

[Eu]eV?^9  1 

['A</>a]/3ei;s  H 

[no]Au</)pao-/i,[wv  — ] 

[.    .    .    .    co]v  II 

A. 

[No^JlTTTTO?    1 

$p- 

[2o<^]okA^s  APIII 

II 

'Ofx. 

[.    ..    .lro,ll[-?] 

A' 

['Apto-Tl]as   [ ] 

-- 

Fig.  776. — Wilhelm's  Transcription  and  Restoration  of  Two  Fragments  of  the 

Athenian  \'ictors'-List. 

See  p.  324,  n.  2 


THEATRICAL  RECORDS  325 

restricted  to  the  City  Dionysia.  But  Suidas  reports  that  accord- 
ing to  some  Aeschylus  had  gained  twenty-eight  victories. 
Perhaps  the  larger  number  is  not  to  be  rejected  as  worthless 
but  is  to  be  regarded  as  including  the  victories  which  Aeschylus' 
plays  are  said  to  have  won  after  his  decease  in  competition,  at 
both  festivals,  with  the  works  of  living  tragedians.  To  Sophocles 
the  inscription  assigns  eighteen  (API  1 1)  victories  at  the  City 
Dionysia,  and  that  is  the  number  which  most  authorities  give. 
But  Suidas,  who  regularly  records  the  aggregate  of  victories  at 
both  festivals,  credits  him  with  twenty-four  victories.  Sophocles 
must,  therefore,  have  been  victorious  six  times  at  the  Lenaea. 
Euripides'  name  does  not  appear  upon  any  extant  portion  of  the 
Victors'-List.  He  is  usually  stated  to  have  won  five  victories, 
but  some  notices  report  fifteen.  Possibly  we  are  to  understand 
that  he  won  ten  Lenaean  victories.  His  comparative  lack  of 
success  while  living  thus  stands  in  striking  contrast  to  his 
popularity  subsequently. 

Dr.  Reisch  has  propounded  an  ingenious  and  plausible  theory 
with  reference  to  the  housing  of  the  Didascaliae  and  the  Victors'- 
Lists  (cf.  op.  ciL,  pp.  302  ff.).  He  believes  that  these  catalogues 
were  prepared  for  the  master  of  contests  (the  agonothete,  see 
p.  271,  above)  for  the  year  278  B.C.,  who  also  erected  a  special 
structure  in  the  precinct  of  Dionysus  Eleuthereus  to  receive 
them.  The  dedicatory  inscription  is  extant,  but  unfortunately 
the  name  of  the  agonothete  is  broken  away.  He  supposes  this 
building  to  have  been  hexagonal,  with  three  sides  of  solid  wall 
and  the  other  three  left  open.  This  arrangement  was  designed 
to  afford  a  maximum  of  fight  for  reading  the  inscriptions  on  the 
interior  of  the  building.  On  the  left  wall,  as  one  passed  through 
the  main  entrance,  were  cut  the  tragic  Didascaliae  of  the  City 
Dionysia.  On  the  architrave  above  was  the  Victors'-List  for 
the  tragic  poets  at  this  festival,  and  on  the  architrave  over  the 
adjoining  (open)  side  to  the  right  was  the  Victors'-List  for  the 
tragic  actors.  On  the  next  wall  to  the  right  were  the  comic 
Didascaliae  of  the  City  Dionysia,  and  on  the  architrave  above 
that  side  and  the  adjoining  (open)  one  were  the  Victors'-Lists  of 


326  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA  % 

the  comic  poets  and  actors  who  had  won  victories  at  this  festival. 
On  the  third  wall  stood  both  the  comic  and  also  the  tragic 
DidascaUae  of  the  Lenaea.  On  the  architrave  above  this  wall 
were  the  Victors'-Lists  of  the  comic  poets  and  actors  at  the  Lenaea, 
and  on  the  architrave  above  the  sixth  (open)  side  were  those  of 
the  tragic  poets  and  actors  at  the  same  festival.  Dr.  Reisch's 
reconstruction  may  be  incorrect  in  some  minor  details,  but  must 
certainly  be  accepted  in  principle. 

One  matter  in  connection  with  all  these  inscriptions  has  beeii 
a  subject  of  keen  controversy  among  scholars,  and  the  end  is 
not  yet.  The  problem  is  too  complicated  to  be  discussed  upon 
its  merits  here,  but  the  general  situation  may  be  outlined.  When 
a  poet  did  not  serve  as  his  own  didascalus  but  brought  out  his 
play  through  someone  else,  did  the  name  of  the  didascalus  or 
that  of  the  poet  appear  in  the  records  ?  On  a  few  points  general 
agreement  is  possible.  For  example,  when  a  poet  had  applied 
for  a  chorus  in  his  own  name  but  died  before  the  festival  and 
someone  else  had  to  assume  his  didascalic  duties,  care  seems  to 
have  been  taken  at  all  periods  to  indicate  the  original  didascalus. 
Again,  in  cases  of  deliberate  deception,  as  when  a  man  without 
dramatic  powers  secured  the  consent  of  a  playwright  to  bring 
out  the  latter 's  work  as  his  own  and  applied  for  a  chorus  as  if 
for  his  own  play,  naturally  the  name  of  the  pseudo-author  would 
be  the  only  one  to  appear  in  the  records.  The  crucial  case 
remains,  viz.,  when  a  dramatist  wished  to  be  reHeved  of  the 
burden  of  stage  management  and  arranged  for  a  didascalus  to 
ask  for  a  chorus  and  assume  responsibility  for  the  performance. 
The  matter  becomes  important  with  reference  to  Aristophanes 
and  the  correct  restoration  of  the  Victors'-Lists  for  comic  poets 
at  the  City  Dionysia  and  the  Lenaea. 

When  Aristophanes  had  written  his  first  play,  the  Banqueters, 
youth,  inexperience,  diffidence,  or  some  other  motive  for  desiring 
to  avoid  the  responsibihty  of  staging  his  play  caused  him  to 
intrust  it  to  Callistratus  for  production  at  the  Lenaea  of  427  B.C. 
The  same  process  was  repeated  at  the  City  Dionysia  of  426  B.C. 
and  the  Lenaea  of  425  B.C.,  when  Callistratus  brought  out  Aris- 


THEATRICAL  RECORDS  327 

tophanes'  Babylonians  and  Acharnians,  respectively.  The 
former  piece  was  apparently  unsuccessful,  but  the  latter  was 
awarded  the  first  prize.  At  the  Lenaea  of  424  B.C.  Aristophanes 
was  equally  successful  with  the  Knights,  which,  however,  he 
produced  in  his  own  name.  In  vss.  5 12  ff .  of  this  play  the  chorus 
declares  that  many  Athenians  approached  the  poet  and  expressed 
their  surprise  that  he  had  not  long  before  asked  for  a  chorus 
in  his  own  name.  This  passage  implies  that  the  real  authorship 
of  Aristophanes'  earher  pieces  was  known  to  a  large  section  of 
the  pubHc,  and  makes  it  clear  that  he  had  produced  no  earlier 
plays  in  his  own  name.  Therefore  if  he  had  won  a  City  victory 
during  this  period  the  comedy  with  which  he  won  it  must  have 
been  brought  out  in  the  name  of  another.  The  earUest  City 
Dionysia,  then,  at  which  he  could  have  produced  a  play  in  his 
own  name  was  in  424  B.C.,  two  months  later  than  the  Knights. 
Now  in  the  Victors'-List  for  comic  poets  at  the  City  Dionysia 
(Fig.  78),'  the  letters  'Apt  appear  in  line  seven  of  the  second 
column.  Is  the  name  of  Aristophanes  or  that  of  Aristomenes  to 
be  restored  here  ? 

We  know  that  EupoUs,  whose  name  stands  next  below  in 
the  list,  won  a  victory  at  the  City  Dionysia  of  421  B.C.  and  that 
Hermippus  and  Cratinus  were  successful  at  the  City  festival  in 
422  and  423  B.C.,  respectively.  This  leaves  the  City  Dionysia 
of  424  B.C.  for  some  unknown  victor,  who  may  have  been  Aris- 
tophanes producing  a  play  in  his  own  name.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  these  victories  of  Hermippus  and  Cratinus  were  certainly 
not  their  first,  and  it  is  possible  that  the  victory  of  EupoHs  in 
421  B.C.  was  also  not  his  first.  If  any  of  these  men  was  in  fact 
the  City  victor  in  424  B.C.,  Aristophanes'  name  could  be  read  at 
this  point  on  the  stone  only  by  supposing  that  he  had  won  a  City 
victory  at  some  date  prior  to  the  Knights  and  consequently  with 
a  play  which  had  been  brought  out  by  another.  If  this  hypoth- 
esis is  correct,  it  would  automatically  be  estabhshed  that  at  this 

'  Fig.  78  is  taken  from  Wilhelm,  op.  cit.,  p.  107  and  represents  Corpus  Inscrip- 
tionum  Graecarum,  II,  977/  and  k,  together  with  two  previously  unpublished 
fragments. 


328  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

period  victories  were  credited  to  the  actual  poet  rather  than  to  ^ 
his  didascalus.     The  argument  here  is  by  no  means  conclusive, 
however,  and  most  authorities  follow  Dr.  Wilhelm  in  restoring 
the  name  of  Aristomenes,  another  poet  who  belonged  to  the 
same  general  period. 

The  same  problem  recurs  in   connection  with  the   comic 
Victors'-List  for  the  Lenaea  (Fig.  79)  .^     Here  Aristophanes'  name 

['Ao-Ti/<a6  TTOrjTuiv]                \T7]\a<X€L^8rjs  1 1 1  NiKO<^ai[v  — ] 

[xwyatKcov]  [ ]s  I         ©£d7ro/A7r[os  — ] 

[XiCOViSt/S  J  KT^]<^tO-o[SoTOS  ] 

—  —  .   .   .]i[7r7ros  ?  — ] 

S  '        4>€p[€KpaT7;S  ]  

r Js  I     'Ep)U,[i7r7ros  — J  — 

'Apt[<rT0/t€V7JS  — ]  — 

[Mayvr^Js  A  I  ETj[7roAts  ■ — ]  — 

[ o^^  I  Ka^AAt'o-Tjoaros  — ]  — 

"  ['AA/ctju,€]vi7[s]  I  ^pv[vLXO'i  — ]  — 

[ ]s  I  'A/i[£ii/^tas  — ]  — 

rEi</)pdi'Jios  I  IIAaj^Twv  — ]  — 

['EK<^av]Ti8j;s  Mil  ^iX\_oiVLBr)<: — ]  — 

[Kpartjvos  ^ '  AuK^ts  — ]]  — 

*s  [AtOTrJet^T^s  1 1  Aev^Kwv  — J  — 

[Kpa]T7;s  III 

[KaXXiaJs  II 

Fig.  78. — ^Wilhelm's  Transcription  and  Restoration  of  Four  Fragments  of  the 

Athenian  Victors'-List. 

See  p.  327,  n.  i 

is  certainly  to  be  restored  somewhere  in  the  lacuna  below  the 
name  of  Eupolis  in  the  first  column.  But  whether  his  name 
stood  in  a  position  corresponding  to  his  own  victory  in  424  B.C. 
or  in  one  corresponding  to  his  victory  through  the  agency  of 
Callistratus  in  the  previous  year,  or  whether  (to  state  it  differ- 
ently) the  name  of  Callistratus  must  be  restored  ahead  of  Aris- 
tophanes' own  name  because  of  his  victory  in  425  B.C.,  are 

'  Fig.  79  is  taken  from  Wilhehn,  op.  cit.,  p.  123,  and  represents  Corpus  Inscrip- 
tionum  Graecarum,  II,  gjjd,  e,f,  g,  and  h. 


THEATRICAL  RECORDS 


329 


questions  which  are  still  incapable  of  categorical  answers.  Lack 
of  space  will  prevent  a  further  argument  of  the  matter,  and  I 
must  close  with  a  summary  of  Dr.  Jachmann's  conclusions. 
His  discussion  is  not  only  the  latest  but  takes  certain  factors 
into  account  which  had  previously  been  ignored.  He  points 
out  that  the  archons'  records,  Aristotle's  Didascaliae,  and  the 
different  types  of  inscriptions  must  be  sharply  differentiated  and 
that  the  first  named  are  the  ultimate  source  of  all  the  others. 


[Ai7i'atK]o[t  ttot/JtiDj' 
[Kw/it/c]wv 

s '  ApiaT0fj.iv7]s  II 
KpaTivos  1 1 1 
^epeKpdTr]S  \\ 
"EpwiTTTTos  nil 
^ptjvixos  1 1 

'»  MvpriXos  I 
[EiJJTToXts  III 


no[ ]  I 

M€[Tay^vri]i  II 
8^o[7ro/U7r]os  || 

noX[i;f7,Xo]s  nil 

NiKO^[wV  — ] 

ATro[\\o(pdvri'\s  \ 
^  Afi[€i\l/ las  — ] 
N[tK0xclp7;s  — ] 
Se«'o[0]aii'  I 
^tXyXXios  I 
^iKdviKos  I 

[ >  I 

[Kri<piff65oros  | 


*/Xt[7r7ros  r?]|| 
X6pTi[yos  — ] 
'Ava^a[v5pl]5T}S  \\\ 
$tX^ra[tpo]j  11 
Eij^ovXos  n 
E(pnnros  |[.  ?] 

[' A]i'Ti<pdv[r]s]  nil  I 

[M]i'7?(7//i [axos]  I 
Nai;[  (TtKpdrJTjs  ||| 
Eu0d«'T;[s  — ] 
"AXe^sll   [— ] 
['Ap]urT[^o<pQv  — ] 


Aio[w(rt]o5  I 
KX4[apx]os[\.      ] 
A6r)voK'KT^s[ 
Uvp[-^v?]  I  s 

AXk^jvwp  I 
Tt/iOKX-^j  I 
JlpOK\eiST)s  I 
Myv]av5pos  \[  — 
^[ilX-qp-iov  III  »» 

'  ATroXX6dupo[s — ] 
Ai(pi.Xos  1 1 1 
^iXnnridris  \\[ — 

—  —  —  'NiKdffTparos  [ — 

«s  —  —  —  KaXXidSr]s  \  V 

—  —  —  '  Afxeivlas  \ 

—  —  ['A(r/cXTj7ri6?5w]/3os  I    '   '    ' 

Fig.  79. — ^Wilhelm'3  Transcription  and  Restoration  of  Five  Fragments  of  the 

Athenian  Victors'-List. 

See  p.  328,  n.  i 

/The  archons,  of  course,  kept  their  records  with  no  thought  of 
later  literary  investigations  but  mainly  with  a  view  to  having  a 
definite  list  of  men  whom  they  were  to  hold  responsible  for 
different  events  upon  their  programs.  Naturally,  then,  they 
had  no  interest  in  current  or  subsequent  charges  of  plagiarism, 
pretended  authorship,  etc.  Jachmann  maintains  that  prior 
to  about  380  B.C.  the  archons  entered  the  name  of  the  didascalus 
alone,  but  after  that  date  they  recorded  the  names  of  both 
didascalus  and  poet  when  these  differed.  He  supposes  the 
change  to  have  been  due  to  a  law,  which  was  made  necessary 
by  the  increasing  practice  of  intrusting  plays  to  men  who  were 


330  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

not  their  authors  and  to  the  consequent  differentiation  of  func- 
tion between  poets  and  didascali.  According  to  Jachmann  the 
same  situation  probably  obtained  also  in  Aristotle's  Didascaliae; 
but  in  the  Victors'-Lists  and  the  inscriptional  Didascaliae  only  the 
didascali  were  listed  before  380  B.C.  and  after  that  date  only 
the  poets.  In  the  Fasti,  on  the  contrary,  only  the  didascali,  as 
the  use  of  the  verb  ibibaaKe  would  indicate,  appeared  at  any  time. 
Besides  some  other  inscriptions  of  lesser  importance  than 
those  already  discussed,  Aristotle's  Didascaliae  was  the  source, 
directly  or  indirectly,  also  of  several  treatises,  collections  of 
classified  data,  catalogues,  etc.,  dealing  with  various  phases  of 
Greek  theatrical  history  and  compiled  by  such  men  as  Dicaear- 
chus,  CalHmachus,  and  Aristophanes  of  Byzantium,  I  shall 
close  with  an  account  of  one  of  these.  I  refer  to  the  system  of 
numbering  which  was  applied  to  ancient  plays.  Thus,  according 
to  the  ancient  hypothesis  (argument)  to  Sophocles'  Antigone 
that  drama  ''was  counted  the  thirty-second"  (XeXe/crat  5e  ro 
dpaixa  rouTo  t piaKoarop  devrepov),  and  the  first  hypothesis  to 
Aristophanes'  Birds  declares  that  that  comedy  "is  the  thirty- 
fifth"  (eWt  8e  Xe).  Before  going  farther  it  will  be  best  to  state 
that  the  latter  numeral  is  inexplicable  under  any  theory,  but 
that  Dindorf's  substitution  of  le  for  Xe  ("fifteen"  for  "thirty- 
five")  is  a  satisfactory  and  convincing  emendation.  With  the 
publication  of  the  Vatican  hypothesis  to  Euripides'  Alcestis  in 
1834  a  third  numeral  came  to  light:  to  Spaixa  eiroLrjdr]  tf  ("the 
drama  was  made  seventeenth").  By  far  the  most  significant 
numeral,  however,  was  pubKshed  in  the  Oxyrhynchus  Papyri 
in  1904.  Here  at  the  top  of  the  last  column  of  a  hypothesis  to 
Cratinus'  lost  Dionysalexandros  stood  the  following  heading, 
doubtless  repeated  from  the  beginning  of  the  hypothesis,  which 
is  now  lost: 

AiovDcr[aX€|avSpos]  "The  Dionysalexandros 

rj  Eighth 

KpaT[uvov]  Of  Cratinus" 

Finally,  one  of  the  fragmentary  hypotheses  to  two  of  Menander's 
plays  published  in  the  Oxyrhynchus  Papyri  of  19 14  begins  as 


THEATRICAL  RECORDS  33 1 

follows:  "The  Imhrians,  commencing  Tor  how  long  a  time, 
Demeas,  my  good  man,  I  .  .  .  .  you.'  This  he  wrote  in  the 
archonship  of  Nicocles,  being  his  7[.]th  play  {ravTrjv  [eypa]\p€y 
ext  Nt/co/cX€o[us  .  .  ]Tr)v  Kal  ejSdoixrjKoaTlrjv]) ,  and  he  gave  it  for 
production  at  the  Dionysia;  but  on  account  of  the  tyrant 
Lachares  the  festival  was  not  celebrated.  Subsequently  it  was 
acted  by  the  Athenian  Callippus."  This  numeral  is  partly 
illegible,  but  was  in  the  seventies,  probably  seventy-j&rst, 
seventy- third,  seventy-sixth,  or  seventy-ninth,  possibly  seventy- 
fourth  or  seventy-fifth. 

The  interpretation  of  these  numerals  has  suffered  from  the 
fact  that  they  did  not  become  known  simultaneously  and  from 
the  further  fact  that  for  the  most  part  explanations  have  been 
advanced  by  editors  who  contented  themselves  with  proposing 
the  most  plausible  interpretation  of  the  particular  numeral 
before  them  without  taking  the  others  into  consideration.  Of 
the  many  suggestions  offered  I  shall  here  confine  my  discussion  to 
two,  the  chronological  and  the  alphabetical.  The  former  inter- 
■  pretation  is  the  oldest  and  receives  confirmation  from  the  fact 
that  Terence's  comedies  are  not  only  arranged  chronologically 
in  our  manuscripts  but  are  provided  with  numerals  on  that  basis 
in  the  didascalic  notices  which  are  prefixed  to  these  Latin  plays. 
These  numbers,  of  course,  would  trace  back  the  system  only  to 
the  Romans  and  to  about  the  time  of  Varro  in  the  first  century 
B.C.  But  inasmuch  as  Aeschines'  speeches  are  arranged  on  the 
same  principle,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  Alexandrian 
Greeks  were  f amihar  with  it.  The  chronological  interpretation,  y 
however,  has  been  open  to  three  objections:  (i)  It  is  impossible 
for  Aristophanes'  Birds  to  have  been  thirty-fifth  in  a  chronologi- 
cal arrangement  of  his  plays.  This  obstacle  may  be  evaded  by 
accepting  Dindorf's  emendation.  (2)  The  Antigone  and  Alcestis 
numerals  are  somewhat  smaller  than  we  might  expect,  since  they 
seem  to  assign  too  few  plays  to  the  earlier  years  of  Sophocles'  and 
Euripides'  activity  as  playwrights.  This  is  not  a  serious  ob- 
jection but  must  be  taken  into  account.  (3)  The  Alcestis  took 
the  place  of  a  satyric  drama  and  therefore  stood  fourth  in  its 


332  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

group.  Consequently  its  numeral  ought  to  be  divisible  by  four, 
and  the  number  seventeen  does  not  satisfy  this  requirement  and 
does  not  seem  consistent  with  the  tetralogic  system  employed 
at  the  City  Dionysia  during  this  period. 

These  difficulties  are  not  insuperable,  but  first  I  wish  to  refer 
to  another  interpretation,  which  has  enjoyed  great  popularity. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  the  Greeks  were  acquainted,  and  at  an 
early  date,  with  the  alphabetical  arrangement  of  titles.  The 
Oxyrhynchus  arguments  to  Menander's  plays,  for  example, 
seem  to  have  been  arranged  in  accordance  with  this  principle. 
The  objection  that  there  would  be  no  point  in  recording  numerals 
derived  from  an  alphabetical  system  for  the  reason  that  it  would 
be  as  easy  to  turn  to  a  given  play  by  means  of  its  initial  letters 
as  by  means  of  its  number  is  invalid  because  in  alphabetical 
hsts  the  Greeks  ignored  all  letters  except  the  first.  For  example, 
fifteen  of  Euripides'  extant  titles  begin  with  alpha,  and  there 
was  no  a  priori  method  of  knowing  which  of  the  fifteen  places 
available  the  Alcestis  would  occupy  (Fig.  80).''  It  becomes 
necessary,  then,  to  examine  the  alphabetical  explanation  without 
prejudice,  and  fortunately  it  is  now  possible  to  reach  an  incon- 
v/trovertible  conclusion.  The  numerals  have  never  lent  them- 
selves cordially  to  this  interpretation,  but  the  final  coup  de  grace 
was  delivered  by  the  recent  discovery  of  the  numeral  for 
Menander's  Imbrians.  Menander  is  said  to  have  written  from 
one  hundred  and  five  to  one  hundred  and  nine  pieces,  but  only 
eighty-six  titles  are  now  known.  Fifty-one  of  these,  however, 
have  initial  letters  which  come  after  iota  in  the  Greek  alphabet. 
Now  the  smallest  restoration  which  is  possible  for  the  Menander 
numeral  is  seventy-one,  and  seventy-one  plus  fifty-one  make 
one  hundred  and  twenty-two,  or  thirteen  more  than  the  largest 
number  recorded  by  any  authority  as  the  aggregate  of  Menan- 
,  der's  works.  Therefore  the  alphabetical  explanation  must  be 
rejected. 

^  Fig.  80  is  taken  from  a  photograph  by  Giraudon  (Paris)  and  furnished  by 
Professor  D.  M.  Robinson.  Note  that  the  first  play  in  t;he  list  on  the  background 
is  the  AAKHSTIS. 


Fig.  8o 

THE  VILLA  ALBANI  STATUE  OF  EURIPIDES  IN  THE  LOUVRE  WITH 

THE  BEGINNING  OF  AN  ALPHABETICAL  LIST  OF  HIS  PLAYS 

See  p.  332,  n.  1 


/  THEATRICAL  RECORDS  333 

^  We  may  now  return  to  the  chronological  interpretation,  and 
first  let  us  note  the  light  which  the  Dionysalexandros  numeral 
throws  upon  the  situation.  It  is  significant  that  this  number 
is  not  incorporated  within  the  hypothesis  but  stood  at  the  top 
of  the  last  column  and  had  doubtless  appeared  also  at  the 
beginning  of  the  hypothesis  (now  lost).  In  my  opinion  this 
was  the  original  form  of  such  a  notice  and  shows  why  in  the 
fuller  form  of  statement  found  elsewhere  a  different  verb  is 
employed  in  each  case — \e\eKTai,  ecFTi,  iTroLrjdr],  and  'eypaxpev. 
When  Aristophanes  of  Byzantium,  or  whoever  was  responsible 
for  the  change,  transferred  these  items  from  the  heading  and 
made  them  integral  parts  of  the  hypothesis,  finding  no  verb  in 
the  original  version  before  him  and  resting  under  the  necessity 
of  now  using  one,  he  did  not  deem  it  essential  to  paraphrase 
the  information  always  in  the  same  way  but,  as  was  natural, 
(employed  now  one  expression  and  now  another.  If  it  be 
I  true  that  the  original  function  of  the  numerals  was  as  we  find 
lit  in  the  Cratinus  h3^othesis,  only  one  explanation  is  possible — 
lit  was  a  device  for  the  convenience  of  some  Hbrary,  probably 
1  that  at  Alexandria.  If  so,  every  play  in  the  collection  would 
I  bear  a  number  and  these  numbers  would  run  consecutively  for 
each  author.  In  other  words,  if  any  play  were  not  pre- 
served in  the  Hbrary,  that  fact  would  not  be  indicated  by  an 
unoccupied  number  being  left  as  a  gap  in  the  enumeration.  Of 
course  it  is  conceivable  that  the  basis  of  arrangement  was  purely 
arbitrary  and  even  varied  with  each  author,  and  in  fact  there 
has  been  a  distinct  tendency  among  recent  authorities  to 
accept  some  such  pessimistic  conclusion.  But  it  is  more  prob- 
able, until  the  contrary  be  proved,  that  some  rational  system 
(alphabetical,  chronological,  etc.)  was  employed  and  employed 
consistently. 

Now  there  can  be  little  room  left  for  doubt  as  to  what  system 
was  actually  chosen,  when  it  is  observed  that  the  foregoing 
statement  of  the  numerals'  purpose  and  use  obviates  two  of  the 
three  objections  to  the  chronological  interpretation.  Euripides 
produced  his  first  play  in  455  B.C.  and  died  in  406  B.C.     He  is 


334  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

said  to  have  written  ninety-two  plays,  or  an  average  of  one  and 
four-fifths  per  annum.  If  the  Alcestis  were  actually  his  seven- 
teenth piece  he  must  have  written  less  than  one  play  a  year 
between  455  B.C.  and  438  B.C.,  when  the  Alcestis  was  produced, 
and  two  and  one-third  plays  a  year  thereafter.  It  is  true  that 
Euripides'  career  opened  slowly  and  that  many  of  his  later  works 
are  characterized  by  hasty  and  careless  execution.  But  this 
disparity  is  too  great,  even  apart  from  the  objection  that  ex 
hypothesi  the  Alcestis  numeral  ought  to  be  a  multiple  of  four. 
If  we  suppose,  however,  that  only  the  plays  that  were  preserved 
received  a  number,  the  situation  at  once  clears.  We  are  informed 
that  seventy-eight  of  Euripides'  works  (four  of  them  spurious) 
were  preserved.  This  is  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  seventy- two 
of  his  titles  are  now  known,  for  the  number  of  titles  now  extant 
generally  approximates  closely  the  number  of  an  author's  plays 
which  were  known  by  the  ancients.  If,  then,  the  Alcestis  was 
seventeenth  among  the  seventy-eight  works  which  were  passing 
under  the  name  of  Euripides  in  antiquity  and  if  it  retained  the 
same  relative  position  as  in  the  complete  hst,  it  must  have  been 
about  the  twentieth  play  which  he  brought  out.  This  number, 
being  divisible  by  four,  would  be  suitable  for  the  last  play  of  a 
tetralogy  and  would  have  the  merit  of  reducing  sHghtly  the 
disproportion  between  the  earlier  and  the  later  activity  of  the 
poet.  Moreover,  since  the  earlier  plays  of  a  dramatist  are  more 
likely  to  have  been  lost  than  the  later  ones,  it  is  possible  to 
suppose  that  the  Alcestis  may  have  been  twenty-fourth  or 
even  twenty-eighth  in  a  complete  list  (chronological)  of  his 
writings.  The  point  is  that  the  purpose  of  the  numerals  as 
deducible  from  the  Dionysalexandros  instance  is  capable  of 
obviating  all  objections  to  the  chronological  interpretation  of 
the  Alcestis  numeral. 

Similarly,  Sophocles  is  said  to  have  written  one  hundred  and 
twenty-three  plays,  and  his  career  extended  from  about  468  B.C. 
to  406  B.C.,  yielding  an  average  of  about  two  plays  per  annum. 
Inasmuch  as  the  Antigone  was  probably  performed  in  441  B.C. 
and  bears  the  numeral  thirty-two,  an  unmodified  chronological 


THEATRICAL  RECORDS  335 

interpretation  would  give  an  average  of  one  and  one-seventh 
plays  a  year  for  Sophocles'  earlier  period  and  of  two  and  three- 
sevenths  for  his  later  period.  But  we  now  have  fragments  of 
somewhat  more  than  one  hundred  Sophoclean  plays;  and  if  the 
Antigone  was  thirty-second  among  these  and  retained  the  same 
relative  position  as  at  first,  it  would  have  been  about  the  thirty- 
seventh  play  which  Sophocles  wrote.  Of  course  this  is  a  mere 
estimate,  but  again  this  solution  has  the  merit  of  assigning  a 
slightly  larger  number  of  plays  to  the  earlier  years  of  the  poet 
and  of  reducing,  to  that  extent,  the  only  objection  to  the 
chronological  interpretation  of  this  numeral. 

Aristophanes'  first  comedy  was  produced  in  427  B.C.,  and  his 
last  one  not  much  later  than  388  B.C.  To  him  were  attributed 
forty-four  plays,  four  of  which  were  considered  spurious.  Appar- 
ently all  of  his  works  were  known  to  the  ancients.  The  Birds 
iwas  produced  at  the  City  Dionysia  of  414  B.C.  in  the  fourteenth 
lyear  of  his  activity  as  a  playwright.  There  is,  therefore,  no 
a  priori  reason  for  refusing  to  beheve  that  it  was  Aristophanes' 
[fifteenth  play.  Nor  does  any  obstacle  arise  from  the  chronology 
of  the  plays,  so  far  as  they  can  be  dated.  On  the  other  hand  the 
[traditional  numeral,  thirty-five,  is  inexpHcable  under  any  logical 
system  of  enumeration,  while  Dindorf's  emendation  is  paleo- 
graphically  simple.  Therefore  we  must  accept  the  substitution 
and  the  chronological  interpretation. 

Cratinus'  career  began  about  452  B.C.  and  closed  in  423  B.C. 
or  soon  thereafter.  Most  scholars  suppose  his  Dionysalexandros 
to  have  been  brought  out  in  430  or  429  B.C.,  though  I  was  myself 
at  first  inclined  to  favor  an  earHer  date.  He  is  said  to  have 
written  twenty-one  plays.  Twenty-six  titles,  however,  were 
accepted  for  him  by  Meineke  and  Kock  in  their  editions  of  the 
Greek  comic  fragments.  Probably  a  few  of  these  titles  must  be 
rejected  as  spurious  or  transferred  to  the  younger  Cratinus,  but 
it  is  also  possible  that  Cratinus  was  much  more  productive  than 
is  commonly  supposed  and  that  twenty-one  was  the  number 
of  his  preserved  works  in  Alexandrian  times,  not  of  all  that  he 
had  composed.     As  the  custom  of  publishing  comedies  seems  to 


336  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

have  started  only  at  about  the  beginning  of  Cratinus'  career  (see 
p.  55,  above),  it  would  not  be  surprising  if  many  of  his  plays, 
especially  of  his  earlier  plays,  were  lost.  At  any  rate  in  a  chrono- 
logical arrangement  of  twenty-one  comedies,  whether  they  were 
the  whole  or  only  the  preserved  part  of  Cratinus'  work,  the 
Dionysalexandros  could  be  the  eighth.  These  conclusions  are 
acceptable  to  Professor  R.  H.  Tanner,  who  will  shortly  publish 
a  dissertation  deahng  with  the  chronology  of  Cratinus'  plays 
and  whose  results  on  the  point  now  under  discussion  he  has 
kindly  permitted  me  to  summarize  here.  He  follows  Croiset 
in  assigning  the  Dionysalexandros  to  the  Lenaea  of  430  B.C.;  six 
plays  he  definitely  dates  before  the  Dionysalexandros ,  and  a 
seventh  somewhat  less  positively.  In  the  thirteen  remaining 
he  has  found  nothing  to  indicate  a  date  prior  to  430  B.C.  Some 
of  them  certainly  belong  to  the  period  subsequent  to  430  B.C. 
It  will  be  seen  that  these  conclusions  are  in  thorough  accord 
with  my  interpretation  of  the  numeral. 

The  chronology  of  Menander's  life  is  not  free  from  uncer- 
tainties, but  these  do  not  seriously  affect  the  present  discussion. 
His  first  play  was  performed  perhaps  as  early  as  324  B.C.,  and 
his  decease  probably  took  place  in  292/1  B.C.  During  these 
thirty-three  or  thirty-four  years  he  composed  some  one  hundred 
and  nine  pieces  or  slightly  over  three  per  annum.  Now  Nicocles 
was  archon  in  302/1  B.C.  If,  then,  the  hypothesis  is  correct  in 
assigning  the  Imhrians  to  the  archonship  of  this  man,  the  number 
seventy-one  (the  smallest  restoration  which  is  possible)  or 
seventy-nine  (the  largest  possible)  would  almost  perfectly  fit 
the  requirements  of  the  case.  Eighty-six  Menandrian  titles 
are  now  known,  and  it  is  not  likely  that  many  of  his  plays  were 
lost  in  Alexandrian  times. 

We  may,  therefore,  summarize  the  preceding  discussion  as 
follows :  If  we  follow  Dindorf  in  reading  te  for  Xe  in  the  h3^othesis 
to  Aristophanes'  Birds,  the  numerals  are  capable  of  a  uniform 
interpretation;  they  were  a  Hbrary  device  and  were  assigned 
to  the  plays  represented  in  some  collection,  most  probably  that 


THEATRICAL  RECORDS  337 

at  Alexandria,  according  to  the  dates  of  their  premieres.  It  is 
needless  to  state  that  in  establishing  the  chronological  sequence 
of  the  plays  in  their  possession  the  library  authorities  would 
depend  upon  Aristotle's  Didascaliae  or  other  handbooks  derived 
therefrom. 


CORRIGENDA  ET  ADDENDA 

P.  xii,  11.  I  f.  The  plays  of  Chaeremon  and  the  other  avayvcaaTiKoi 
mentioned  in  Aristotle's  Rhetoric,  1413612,  were  "capable  of  being  read" 
with  enjoyment  in  addition  to  being  performed,  rather  than  "closet  dramas " 
in  the  modem  sense.     Cf.  Haigh,  The  Tragic  Drama  of  the  Greeks,  pp.  426-29. 

P.  xvii,  U.  10  ff.  To  the  works  cited  should  now  be  added  GoodeU's 
Athenian  Tragedy  (1920),  and  Norwood's  Greek  Tragedy  (1920). 

Pp.  XX  f.  To  the  works  cited  should  now  be  added  Bieber's  Die  Denk- 
mdler  zum  Theaterwesen  im  Altertum  (1920),  a  profusely  illustrated  corpus 
of  scenic  data  which  at  last  antiquates  Wieseler's  T heater gebdude  und 
Denkmdler  des  Buhnenwesens  bei  den  Griechern  und  Romern  (1851).  For 
Frickenhaus,  Die  altgriechische  BUhne  (1917),  see  Allen's  review  in  Classical 
Philology,  XVII  (1922),  pp.  166  fif. 

P.  s,  1.  18.  Cf.  Norwood,  op.  cit,  pp.  42  f :  "As  to  the  value  of  Aristotle's 
evidence  we  must  distinguish  carefully  between  the  facts  which  he  reports 
and  his  comment  thereon.  The  latter  we  should  study  with  the  respect 
due  to  his  vast  merits;  but  he  is  not  infallible.  When,  for  instance,  .... 
he  blames  Euripides  because  'Iphigenia  the  suppliant  in  no  way  resembles 
her  later  self,  '■  we  shall  regard  him  less  as  helping  us  than  as  dating  himself. 
But  as  to  the  objective  facts  which  he  records  he  must  be  looked  on  as  for  us 
infallible.  He  lived  in  or  close  to  the  periods  of  which  he  writes;  he  com- 
manded a  vast  array  of  documents  now  lost  to  us;  he  was  strongly  desirous 
of  ascertaining  the  facts;  his  temperament  and  method  were  keenly  scien- 
tific; his  industry  prodigious.  We  may,  and  should,  discuss  his  opinions; 
his  facts  we  cannot  dispute." 

P.  16,  1.  22.  'k-KOKp'ivtadai  became  viroKpiveadai  when  masks  were 
introduced  and  the  actors  spoke  from  "beneath"  or  "behind"  them  {viro). 

P.  17,  n.  For  new  interpretations  of  Aeschylus'  statement  concerning 
Homer,  cf.  Scott,  The  Unity  of  Homer  (1921),  pp.  27  f.,  and  Radin,  "Homer 
and  Aeschylus,"  Classical  Journal,  XVII  (1922),  332  ff. 

P.  62,  1.  13.  Cf.  Travels  in  Greece,  pp.  61  ff.,  published  in  1776  but 
referring  to  a  journey  taken  in  1765. 

P.  65, 1.  10,  "about  eighty-eight  feet  in  diameter."  In  my  fi.rst  edition 
the  diameter  of  the  orchestra-terrace  was  given  as  seventy -eight  feet  (24  m.). 
This  statement  was  derived  from  Dorpfeld  himself,  cf.  Das  griechische 
Theater,  pp.  26  f .  In  Philologische  Wochenschrift,  XLI  (i92i),i2i3, however, 
he  pointed  out  that  in  the  drawings  of  his  earlier  pubHcation  this  circle 
was  given  a  diameter  of  26  m.  (!),  and  he  is  now  willing  to  accept  a  diameter 

'  See  p.  267,  above. 

338 


I 


CORRIGENDA  ET  ADDENDA  339 

of  27  m.  This  discrepancy  between  Dorpfeld's  text  and  his  drawings  is 
most  surprising  and  had  escaped  the  attention  of  all  subsequent  writers  on 
the  subject.  But  a  compass  will  quickly  establish  the  fact  that  a  circle  of 
26  m.  or  27  m.  is  required  to  include  the  stones  B  and  C  and  the  cutting  at 
A  in  Figure  32,  above.  In  the  following  discussion  a  diameter  of  eighty- 
eight  feet  (27  m.)  is  accepted  as  correct. 

Pp.  66  ff.  Our  knowledge  of  the  Athenian  theater  has  been  substan- 
tially increased  by  Allen,  "The  Greek  Theater  of  the  Fifth  Century  before 
Christ, "  University  of  California  Studies  in  Classical  Philology,  Vol.  VII 
(1920).  Like  the  rest  of  us,  Professor  Allen  accepted  24  m.  as  the  diameter 
of  the  early  orchestra-terrace;  but  fortunately  his  conclusions  were  largely 
based  upon  Dorpfeld's  drawings  and  so  he  was  dealing  with  a  26  m.  circle 
without  knowing  it.  Nevertheless  it  is  necessary  to  recast  his  statements 
somewhat  in  view  of  the  situation  disclosed  in  the  preceding  paragraph. 

If  then  27  m.  be  accepted  as  correct  for  the  diameter  of  the  early 
orchestra-terrace,  it  is  identical  in  size  with  a  hypothetical  orchestra-terrace 
of  the  Lycurgus  theater  as  determined  by  the  front  line  of  the  lowest  row 
of  seats  in  the  auditorium  of  this  period  (Fig.  81).'  Now  if  this  orchestra- 
terrace,  together  with  the  orchestra  and  scene-buildings  of  the  Lycurgus 
theater,  be  thought  of  as  pushed  a  few  feet  south  and  east  back  to  the 
original  site  of  the  theater  and  until  it  coincides  with  the  orchestra-terrace 
of  Aeschylus  (Fig.  82),^  some  interesting  relationships  are  brought  to  light.J 
In  the  first  place,  the  inner  corners  of  the  parascenia  touch  the  inner  edge 
of  the  terrace's  retaining  wall,  and  the  wall  connecting  the  parascenia  at 
the  rear  forms  a  tangent  to  the  terrace  wall.  Secondly,  if  a  line  be  drawn 
between  the  parascenia  in  their  new  position  at  the  same  distance  back  of 
their  front  line  as  the  Hellenistic  proscenium  stood  back  of  the  Hellenistic 
parascenia  (viz.,  about  four  feet,  this  probably  being  the  position  also  of 
the  wooden  proscenium  in  the  Lycurgus  theater,  see  pp.  69  f.,  above),  this 
line  would  be  "an  exact  chord  of  the  outermost  circumference  of  the  old 
terrace-wall."  Also,  the  fragments  K  K'  in  Figure  82  are  contemporaneous 
with  fragments  B  and  C  of  the  early  orchestra-terrace  (Fig.  32)  and  probably 
belonged  to  the  retaining  wall  of  the  parodus  in  the  first  half  of  the  fifth 
century.  If  a  line  determined  by  these  fragments  be  continued  to  the  east, 
it  will  intersect  the  retaining  wall  of  the  orchestra-terrace  at  about  the  same 
pwint  as  does  the  chord.  It  is  to  be  observed,  also,  how  closely  the  position 
of  this  chord  as  deduced  from  the  position  of  the  proscenium  in  the  Hellen- 

'  Fig.  81  is  specially  drawn  but  rs  partially  based  upon  Noack  (see  Fig.  32a, 
above)  and  Allen,  op.  cit.,  Fig.  17. 

^  Fig.  82  is  specially  drawn  from  an  outline  kindly  furnished  by  Professor 
Allen  to  illustrate  his  present  position. 

3  These  are  somewhat  confused  in  Dorpfeld's  review  of  Allen,  Pkilologische 
Wochenschrift,  XLI  (1921),  1212  ff. 


340 


THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 


CORRIGENDA  ET  ADDENDA 


341 


342  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

istic  theater  approximates  that  of  the  south  side  of  a  square  inscribed 
in  the  orchestra-terrace,  see  Figures  43  and  82.  Finally,  the  Lycurgus 
orchestra,  19.61  m.  in  diameter  and  separated  from  the  north  boundary  of 
the  Aeschylean  orchestra-terrace  by  the  same  distance  (2.5  m.)  as  from  the 
hypothetical  orchestra-terrace  of  the  Lycurgus  theater  (see  E  F  and  G  H  in 
Fig.  81),  almost  has  as  its  tangent  the  hne  connecting  the  front  walls  of  the 
parascenia. 

These  discoveries  at  once  confirm  the  common  assumption  that  the 
"fourth  century  structure  probably  reproduced  in  stone  the  main  outlines 
of  the  earlier  theater  in  which  the  later  tragedies  of  Sophocles  and  Euripides 
and  all  the  plays  of  Aristophanes  were  performed"  (see  p.  70,  above),  and 
also  make  clear  that  this  theater  was  itself  a  reproduction,  on  a  slightly 
different  site,  of  the  still  earlier  scenic  arrangements.  It  thus  becomes 
evident  that  the  shift  in  the  position  of  the  theater  took  place  about  430  B.C. 
and  not  about  465  B.C.,  a  point  which  in  my  first  edition  I  considered  still 
to  be  a  matter  of  doubt. 

Further  inferences  are  more  uncertain.  AUen  believes  the  earliest 
portion  of  the  scene-buUding,  the  "Aeschylean  aKrjvij,"  to  have  been  a 
small  stoa-like  structure  erected  wholly  on  the  orchestra-terrace  along  the 
chord  above  mentioned.  He  thinks  that  this  was  built  primarily  as  a 
background,  and  hints  that  it  may  have  been  used  in  the  time  of  Aeschylus' 
Seven  against  Thebes  or  Persians,  or  even  of  the  Suppliants,  certainly  several 
years  before  458  B.C.  At  an  early  date,  perhaps  as  early  as  the  Eumenides, 
this  <7Kr]vq  was  extended  beyond  the  circle  of  the  terrace  and  two  parascenia 
were  added  at  its  ends  so  as  to  afford  a  more  effective  and  more  ornamental 
screen  for  actors  passing  behind  the  scenes  from  one  parodus  to  the  other 
and  also  to  increase  the  dressing-room  facilities.  These  parascenia  and 
portions  of  the  enlarged  aKT]vi]  stood  outside  of  the  orchestra-terrace  (Fig.  82). 
Finally,  he  beUeves  that  not  later  than  about  430  B.C.,  when  the  position 
of  the  theater  was  shifted  for  two  reasons  mentioned  on  page  68,  above,  a 
real  scene-building  (two  stories)  was  built  behind  the  rear  wall  of  the  old 
(jK-qvi)  (in  its  new  position),  which  was  thus  automatically  converted  into  a 
proscenium.  Thus,  the  proscenium  of  the  fully  developed  theater  was  not 
a  later  addition  or  an  afterthought  but  a  transformation  of  the  original  unit 
of  the  structure. 

I  find  myself  unable,  however,  to  accept  this  series  of  developments  as 
correct  at  all  points.  I  find  plausibility  in  Noack's  contention'  that  origin- 
ally there  was  only  one  entrance  to  the  orchestra-terrace;  this  was  a  ramp 
leading  up  to  the  terrace  from  the  west  and  was  delimited  on  the  south  by 

'  Cf.  Sktjj^  TpayiKi),  Eine  Studie  uber  die  scenischen  Anlagen  auf  der  Orchestra 
des  Aischylos  und  der  anderen  Tragiker  (1915),  p.  5.  Noack's  reconstruction  of  the 
scene-buildings,  however,  is  invalidated  by  Allen's  discovery. 


CORRIGENDA  ET  ADDENDA  343 

aai  ancient  retaining  wall,  of  which  two  fragments  are  located  at  K  K'  in 
Figure  82.  Therefore,  it  is  probable  that,  when  scenic  accessories  such  as 
an  altar  or  tomb  were  required  in  a  certain  play,  they  were  located  on  the 
terrace  wdth  reference  to  the  line  of  this  wall.  Before  long,  I  believe,  a 
quasi-permanent  structure  was  erected  for  this  purpose  just  outside  the 
terrace  where  one  of  the  parascenia  afterward  stood.  WTien  the  require- 
ments of  a  play  demanded  a  second  structure,  the  obvious  position  was  that 
afterward  occupied  by  the  other  parascenium  on  the  opposite  side  of  the 
terrace.  The  earliest  of  the  preserved  plays  which  demands  two  entrances 
is  Aeschylus'  Libation-Bearers,  where  the  women's  quarters  and  the  men's 
quarters  are  expressly  referred  to  (vss.  712  and  S78),  and  the  doors  leading 
into  them  were  undoubtedly  visible  to  the  audience;  but  of  course  this 
innovation  must  have  been  introduced  several  years  before  the  date  of  that 
play  (458  B.C.).  It  must  quickly  have  occurred  to  someone  that  there 
would  be  an  advantage  in  concealing  the  movements  of  actors  and  "stage- 
hands" behind  the  scenes  by  connecting  these  two  buildings  with  a  low  wall 
erected  along  a  chord  of  the  terrace.  It  is  probable  that  this  development 
had  already  taken  place  in  the  time  of  Aeschylus'  Sevot  against  Thebes 
(467  B.C.) ;  at  least,  such  a  mise  en  scene  would  suitably  suggest  two  redoubts 
and  the  parapet  of  the  Theban  acropoUs  where  the  action  of  this  play  is 
laid.  When  matters  had  reached  this  stage,  further  developments  came 
thick  and  fast,  for  the  structures  were  all  more  or  less  temporary  and  there 
is  an  ancient  tradition  that  in  the  early  days  the  theater  setting  was  recon- 
structed annually.'  When  a  third  doorway  w'as  desired,  perhaps  thought 
of  as  leading  into  a  more  pretentious  building,  what  more  natural  than  to 
enlarge  the  connecting  wall  between  the  parascenia  (to  use  the  later  terra 
for  them)  into  a  long,  oblong  chamber  with  a  central  door  in  its  front  wall  and 
its  rear  wall  forming  a  tangent  to  the  terrace  at  A  (Figs.  81  f.;  also  Fig.  74). 
About  430  B.C.,  when  the  expanding  needs  of  Athenian  drama  called  for 
larger  scenic  accommodations,  the  orchestra  and  its  structures  were  moved 
about  thirty-five  feet  north  and  west  so  that  a  more  ample  scene-building 
could  be  erected  behind  the  tangent  at  C  on  the  new  (hypothetical) 
orchestra-terrace,  and  this  was  one  of  the  compelling  reasons  for  the  shift 
in  location.  Simultaneously,  as  I  believe,  a  wooden  colonnade  w^as  built  in 
front  of  the  parascenia  and  the  intermediate  portion  of  the  new  scene- 
building  along  a  line  corresponding  to  the  old  chord,  thus  providing  a  pro- 
scenium. Perhaps  it  was  at  this  time,  also,  that  two  additional  doors 
were  placed  in  the  front  wall  of  the  scene-building,  and  those  in  the  para- 
scenia closed.  At  least  this  is  the  situation  in  the  Lycurgus  theater 
(Fig.  32),  which  probably  follows  its  predecessor  in  this  respect.  Unfor- 
tunately it  is  quite  impossible  to  date  all  these  developments  with  exactness 

»  Cf.  Kaibel,  Comicoriim  Graecorum  Fragmenla,  I,  22  (Tzetzes). 


344  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

or  even  to  trace  their  precise  sequence.  Allen,  it  will  be  remembered, 
favors  a  proscenium-like  (XKrjvfj  as  early  as  450  B.C.  On  the  other  hand,  no 
permanent  proscenium  was  erected  before  Hellenistic  times  (see  p.  70, 
above).  But  at  least  we  should  be  grateful  that  some  additional  light  has 
recently  been  thrown  on  our  problems. 

P.  90,  n.  I.  It  should  be  remembered,  as  stated  on  p.  69,  that  this 
particular  seat  belongs  to  the  Lycurgus  theater  in  the  next  century.  The 
inscription  was  not  cut  upon  it  until  the  first  century  B.C. ;  previously  the 
inscription  must  have  been  painted,  or  no  need  of  one  was  felt  until  the  chairs 
of  other  dignitaries  were  inscribed,  cf.  Dorpfeld,  Das  griechische  Theater, 
pp.  46  f.  Of  course,  there  can  be  no  doubt  where  the  priest  of  Dionysus 
sat  in  the  Athenian  theater. 

P.  91,  n.  3.  The  scholiast  on  verse  149  of  Aristophanes'  Knights  states 
that  in  theatrical  usage  ava^alveiv  and  Kara^aiveLV  had  acquired  the  techni- 
cal meanings  of  "  go  on  "  and  ''gooff"  and  that  this  had  arisen  "from  ancient 
practice."  This  interpretation  has  been  adopted  by  many  modem  authori- 
ties who  have  difficulty,  however,  in  discovering  the  source  of  the  "ancient 
practice."  Allen,  "The  Greek  Theater  of  the  Fifth  Century  before  Christ," 
pp.  36  ff ,  derives  it  from  the  upward  slope  of  the  parodi  leading  to  the 
orchestra-terrace  in  the  earliest  period  of  the  Athenian  theater. 

P.  100, 11.  26  f.  Unless  the  anecdote  in  Athenaeus,  p.  63  iF,  is  modern- 
ized, viroffKrivLov  is  there  used  with  reference  to  the  first-story  room  of  the 
Hellenistic  theater.  Antigenidas  is  mentioned  in  the  Delian  Victors'-List 
for  265  B.C. 

Pp.  113  f.  Further  light  has  been  thrown  on  the  Priene  theater  by 
Armin  von  Gerkan's  profusely  illustrated  Das  Theater  von  Priene  (1921). 
He  assigns  the  Hellenistic  structure  (Fig.  83)'  to  about  300  B.C.  and  with 
Dorpfeld  interprets  its  proscenium  as  a  background,  not  a  stage.  He 
suggests,  somewhat  improbably,  that  the  origin  of  the  proscenium  in  Greek 
theaters  is  to  be  sought  in  the  field  of  Peloponnesian  comedy  (p.  126). 
The  Graeco-Roman  rebuilding  (Fig.  84)'  of  the  Priene  theater  he  places  at 
about  160  B.C.,  and  maintains  that  this  was  the  period  when  a  stage  was 
introduced  into  Greek  theaters  under  the  influence  of  comedy  as  produced 
in  Southern  Italy  (pp.  128  f.).  He  believes  that  alongside  of  the  formal, 
state  performances  at  Athens  and  elsewhere,  which  were  choral  by  origin  and 
so  were  best  adapted  to  presentation  in  an  orchestra,  there  must  always 
have  existed  non-choral  popular  performances  which  made  no  pretense  of 
artistic  excellence  but  were  very  attractive  to  the  masses,  and  that  they 
were  probably  presented  outside  of  the  state  theater  and  on  rude  stages. 
With  the  gradual  shrinking  of  the  dramatic  chorus  the  existence  of  such 
performances  facilitated  the  introduction  of  a  staged  type  of  theater  from 
Magna  Graecia  in  the  middle  of  the  second  century. 

'  Figs.  83  f.  reproduce  Plates  36  and  35  respectively  in  von  Gerkan's  book. 


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346  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

Pp.  114  f.  Cf.  Athenaeus,  p.  622C:  ot  5e  (/)aXXo(/)6pot  ....  irapkpxov- 
Tttt  01  fi^v  eK  vapodov,  ol  8e  /card  fiecras  ras  dvpas. 

P.  124,  11.  7  ff.  and  29  f.  Cf.  Goodell,  Athenian  Tragedy  (1920),  p.  63: 
"But  our  personal  suffering,  while  it  may  be  idealized  into  a  work  of  art 
that  will  give  the  right  pleasure  to  others,  cannot  be  so  re-presented  to  us. 
Our  pain  will  be  so  keen  as  to  overpower  the  pleasure."  Phrynichus  had 
not  learned  this  dramatic  law. 

P.  136,  1.  15.  Cf.  Goodell,  op.  cit.,  p.  77:  "A  Greek  tragedy  could  not 
exist  without  a  chorus,  the  historic  beginning  and  ever  the  heart  of  drama 
to  the  Greeks.  A  unified  group  of  participants  in  the  action — •fifty,  twelve, 
finally  fifteen — had  to  be  provided,  whether  the  story  naturally  called  for 
them  or  not.  The  first  business  of  the  playwright  was  to  shape  the  story 
so  that  it  would  call  for  them." 

Pp.  141  f.  For  a  second  chorus  in  Roman  tragedy,  cf.  Classical  Journal^ 
XIII  (1918),  561  f.  .(Frank). 

P.  163,  I.  4.  The  next  step  beyond  the  lyric  duet  between  chorus  and 
coryphaeus  would  be  one  between  chorus  and  actor,  such  as  Aeschylus' 
Suppliants,  verses  843-903.  This  p)assage  and  verses  347  fif.  and  736  ff., 
together  with  Persians,  verses  256  ff.  and  694  ff.,  are  in  the  epirrhematic 
form  (see  p.  41,  above)  in  which  Kranz,  "Die  Urform  der  attischen  Tragodie 
und  Komodie,"  Neue  Jahrhiicher  fiir  das  klassische  Alterlum,  XX.III  (19 19), 
145  ff.,  recognizes  the  first  germ  of  dramatic  action  in  both  tragedy  and 
comedy.  For  the  latter  there  is  nothing  new  about  this  doctrine  (see  p.  42, 
above) .  The  tragic  passages  cited  show  types  in  the  course  of  development, 
since  the  replies  of  the  actor  must  originally  have  been  in  lyric  meter,  then 
in  the  primitive  trochaic  tetrameter  (see  pp.  22  and  45,  above),  and  finally 
in  iambics. 

P.  169,  1.  15.  Rupprecht  defends  the  variant  reading  hv  iitacjo  (not 
fiovtc)  tQ  Qaixvpih  as  the  correct  text  in  Sophodis  Vita,  5,  cf.  Philologus^ 
LXXVI  (1920),  213  ff.     This  would  change  the  point  of  the  anecdote. 

Pp.  193  f.  Cf.  Holzapfel,  Kennt  die  griechische  Tragodie  eine  Aktein- 
teilung?  (19 1 4). 

P.  202,  1.  23.  According  to  Plato's  Symposium  (223D),  Socrates 
forced  Aristophanes  and  Agathon  to  admit  that  "the  same  man  might 
understand  how  to  comp>ose  comedy  and  tragedy";  but  Ion  of  Chios,  who 
began  to  exhibit  tragedies  in  451  B.C.  and  was  defeated  by  Euripides  in 
428  B.C.,  is  the  only  known  example.  He  dabbled  in  a  dozen  forms  of 
literature. 

Pp.  225  f.  David  Belasco's  The  Return  of  Peter  Grimm  also  observes 
the  Greek  rules.  In  this  instance,  however,  the  ghost's  speeches,  though 
heard  by  the  audience,  are  thought  of  as  being  inaudible  to  the  other  charac- 
ters on  the  stage  but  unconsciously  affecting  their  thoughts  and  conduct. 


CORRIGENDA  ET  ADDENDA  347 

P.  226, 1.  35.     Possibly  at  first  by  a  single  parodus,  see  p.  342. 

P.  23s,  11.  8  flf.  Petersen,  Die  attische  Tragodie  als  Bild-  utid  Bilhtienktinst 
^igis),  p.  561,  stages  this  scene  in  terms  of  upper  and  lower  parodi,  which 
tie  very  improbably  claims  for  the  fifth-century  theater. 

P.  241,  11.  21  ff.  "In  Racine  and  Corneille,  on  the  contrary,  the  com- 
monest location  of  the  action  is  a  palace ;  it  is  what  takes  place  out  of  doors 
that  must  be  narrated,"  cf.  Goodell,  Athenian  Tragedy,  p.  81. 

P.  248,  1.  II.  Cf.  Goodell,  op.  cit.  p.  89:  "Discreet  silence  about 
distances  and  anything  like  a  city  plan  leaves  all  inconvenient  details 
floating  in  ideal  space." 

P.  249,  11.  3-5.  A  slighter  instance  occurs  in  Aeschylus'  Eumenides, 
cf.  Goodell,  op.  cit.  p.  85:  "The  ancient  image  of  the  goddess  was  in  fact 
in  the  temple,  as  everybody  knew;  but  since  dramatic  necessity  required 
it  to  be  outside,  outside  it  was,  that  the  play  might  go  on.  And  the  temple 
itself  is  henceforth  ignored  and  so  disappears  from  the  play." 

P.  266, 11.  7  flf.  There  was  the  possibility,  however,  of  a  great  difference 
between  a  personage's  apparent  character  at  the  beginning  of  the  play  and 
that  which  was  gradually  revealed  in  the  course  of  the  dramatic  action  as 
his  soul's  history  was  unrolled  bit  by  bit  and  stripped  of  its  false  glamor. 
This  unveiling  process  commended  itself  to  Sophocles  in  his  Oedipus  the 
King  no  less  than  to  Ibsen  in  Rosmersholm.  Cf.  also  A.  T.  Murray,  "Plot 
and  Character  in  Greek  Tragedy,"  Transactions  American  Philological 
Association,  XL VII  (191 6),  51  ff. 

P.  267,  11.  14  ff.  An  opposite  opinion  was  held  by  Goodell,  op.  cit., 
p.  191:  "Here,  in  a  play  extraordinarily  rich  in  dramatic  material  of  every 
kind,  is  a  group  of  characters  portrayed  with  a  vigor  and  directness  never 
surpassed,  exhibiting  a  fuUness  of  indlviduaUty  that  the  greatest  actors 
would  find  inexhaustible." 

Pp.  282  f.  Cf.  Goodell,  op.  cit.,  p.  164:  "Modem  plays  tend  to  abbre- 
viate this  final  stage.  Modern  audiences — perhaps  because  it  is  late  in  the 
evening — get  impatient  to  leave  after  the  struggle  is  decided;  they  are 
less  interested  in  seeing  results  fully  set  forth.  The  Athenians,  on  the  other 
hand,  Hked  a  longer  and  fuller  telos." 

Pp.  284  f.  Cf.  Norwood,  Greek  Tragedy,  pp.  66  f:  "The  Elizabethan 
theater  accepted  precisely  this  contrivance  of  the  eccyclema.  In  our  texts 
of  Henry  VI  (Part  II,  Act  III,  scene  2)  we  read  this  stage-direction:  'The 
folding-doors  of  an  inner  chamber  are  thrown  open,  and  Gloucester  is 
discovered  dead  in  his  bed:  Warwick  and  others  standing  by  it.'  Instead 
of  all  this,  the  old  direction  merely  says:  'Bed  put  forth.'  In  another 
early  drama  we  find  the  amusing  instruction:  'Enter  So-and-So  in  Bed.' 
The  aesthetic  objection  to  the  eccyclema  has  no  force  whatever." 


348  THE  GREEK  THEATER  AND  ITS  DRAMA 

P.  285,  n.  2.  Figure  74  has  been  redrawn  since  the  first  edition  in  order 
to  include  the  parascenia  and  their  doors.  I  am  indebted  to  my  friend, 
Mr.  Thomas  E.  Tallmadge,  of  the  American  Institute  of  Architects,  for 
the  new  drawing. 

P.  29s,  11.  33  £f.  Some  would  interpret  Euripides'  use  of  the  deus  ex 
machina  in  terms  of  his  alleged  rationaUstic  propaganda.  That  is  to  say, 
accepting  the  presuppositions  of  the  plot  chosen  for  dramatic  treatment 
he  sought  to  develop  the  incidents  in  a  perfectly  natural  and  logical  way  to 
a  finale  which  coidd  only  be  transformed  to  the  traditional  ending  by  a 
divine  interposition.  Thus,  at  verse  1625  of  his  Orestes,  we  have  reached 
a  conclusion  which  was  the  inevitable  outcome  of  Orestes'  circumstances, 
character,  and  adventures.  Only  a  deity  could  reconcile  him  to  his  estranged 
relatives  and  subjects  and  restore  his  fortunes.  According  to  this  view,  the 
patent  divergence  between  tradition  and  the  actualities  of  existence  would 
convince  all  who  were  capable  of  being  convinced  that  the  popular  theology 
and  its  tales  must  be  revamped  or  abandoned.  This  device  would  be 
particularly  effective  if  a  god  should  be  required  to  impose  his  authority 
in  a  fashion  which  would  not  measure  up  to  the  best  standards  of  himian 
morality  and  conduct. 

Pp.  2982.  Cf.  Spring,  "A  Study  of  Exposition  in  Greek  Tragedy," 
Harvard  Studies,  XXVIII  (1917),  135  ff.,  and  Stuart,  "Foreshadowing  and 
Suspense  in  the  Euripidean  Prologue,"  Studies  in  Philology,  XV  (1918), 
295  flf. 

P.  303, 11.  17  ff.  Stuart,  op.  cit.,  p.  306,  "amends"  Murray's  statement: 
"There  is  a  secret  and  the  playwright  aims  at  this  sort  of  excitement. 
We  are  told  once  in  unequivocal  words,  with  nothing  to  cast  doubt  on  them, 
exactly  what  will  happen  (Hippolytus).  But  generally  we  are  told  what 
thing  we  may  hope  or  fear  will  happen.  Or  we  are  told  what  will  happen 
and  we  find  that  it  does  not  happen  with  the  expected  result  (Orestes  and 
Electra  condemned  to  death).  Or  we  are  told  how  it  will  happen  and  find 
that  it  does  not  happen  in  this  way  (Ion)." 


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